Legal Citation Generator

About the Legal Citation Generator

Legal writing has its own citation systems, and they disagree on almost everything: the Bluebook writes Brown v. Bd. of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954); OSCOLA writes Corr v IBC Vehicles Ltd [2008] UKHL 13, [2008] 1 AC 884 with no full stops at all; and Indian practice cites K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India, (2017) 10 SCC 1, with the Supreme Court’s own neutral citations in the form “2023 INSC 1”.

Pick a style and a source — case, statute, journal article, book or website — fill in what you have, and get the first footnote, the short form for later footnotes (“Brown, 347 U.S. at 495”, “Corr (n 3) [31]”, “Puttaswamy (supra)”), Id., and the bibliography or table entry. The tool follows the Bluebook’s 22nd edition (with the Bluepages typeface used in court documents) and OSCOLA’s 5th edition — which drops “ibid” and puts website names in italics. With a pass, Copy keeps the italics when you paste into Word or Google Docs, and you can collect citations into a list and download it as RTF. The free preview shows the first words of each citation, short form and entry (at most half of each); a Pro pass unlocks them in full, with Copy and the list’s files. Everything happens in your browser.

Common uses

• Footnotes for an LLB or LLM paper, a dissertation or a law-journal submission.
• Citations in a moot memorial, a brief or a legal memo.
• Converting a citation from one style to another for a different journal or court.
• Building a bibliography or table of authorities for a thesis.

What the three styles do

• Bluebook (22nd edition): case names, book and article titles, web-page titles, signals and Id. in italics (the Bluepages typeface for briefs and memos); “v.” with a full stop; the court and year in a closing parenthetical, with the court left out for the U.S. Reports; editions as “3d ed.”; no publisher for books; no year for the current United States Code (rule 12.3.2). The 22nd edition adds the signal contrast (rule 1.2), rewrites rule 18 on internet sources — including AI-generated content — and lets codification information be left out by context (rule 12.4(f)).
• OSCOLA (5th edition): minimal punctuation, so “v” and “US” without full stops; the neutral citation then the best report, or the court in brackets after the report; paragraph pinpoints in square brackets; titles of articles in single quotes; publisher and year for books; website names in italics, with an access date only when there is no persistent link or DOI. Later citations use a short form and a cross-reference such as “(n 3)” — the 5th edition no longer uses “ibid”. Bibliographies put the surname first with initials and end without a full stop; cases and legislation go in tables instead.
• Indian practice: the case name, then the neutral citation and the reports, parallel citations joined by “ : ” — “(1973) 4 SCC 225 : AIR 1973 SC 1461”; “v.” with a full stop; Acts with a comma before the year and “s.” for section; later references as “Puttaswamy (supra)”. Books, articles and websites take the OSCOLA forms.

Indian neutral citations

The Supreme Court of India gives each reported judgment a neutral citation of the form year INSC number — its own documents cite, for example, “2025 INSC 667” — which you can cite alone or before the SCC, SCR or AIR report. High Courts print their own neutral citations at the top of their judgments, usually year, court code and number separated by colons, such as “2023:DHC:1234”; copy the one printed on the judgment exactly. The generator checks only that a year is there.

Typeface: briefs and law reviews

The Bluebook has two typefaces. In court documents and memos (the Bluepages) case names and titles are italicised or underlined — which this generator uses. In law-review footnotes, full case names stay in roman type and book authors, titles and journal names are set in large and small capitals; if you write for a journal, change the typeface after pasting. OSCOLA italicises case names and book titles in footnotes but not in tables of cases.

Sources

• OSCOLA, 5th edition — the online text, quick reference guide and list of changes, Oxford Faculty of Law
• The Bluebook — preface to the 22nd edition and law-library guides written for that edition
• Supreme Court of India — neutral citation

Limitations

• It formats what you type: it does not look up cases or abbreviate reporter, court or journal names for you — use the style’s tables.
• It covers the five commonest sources; for treaties, Hansard, EU and international materials, follow the style guide.
• Bluebook output uses the Bluepages typeface (italics), not the law-review typeface with small capitals.
• Indian citation practice is not codified in one manual; courts, journals and law schools differ in details, so follow the format your forum asks for.

Privacy

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