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Party names, year, court, report — in an order that differs by country.
Also known as: Case citation, Letters and numbers after a case name, How to read a court case reference
A citation is an address, and its parts are always the same four things: who was involved, when, which court, and where the report of it is printed. What changes between jurisdictions is the order, the brackets and the abbreviations — which is why a citation is unreadable until you know which country wrote it.
A legal citation locates a judgment or a piece of legislation by naming the parties or short title, the year, the court or series, and the volume and page or paragraph at which it is found.
A record about how a reference is written, not about what the law says. Nothing here is legal advice.
The order and punctuation differ by jurisdiction. English practice puts the parties first and the court in the citation itself; American practice abbreviates the reporter and puts the court in parentheses at the end. Neither can be read by the other's rules.
A citation stripped of its jurisdiction is frequently unresolvable.
United Kingdom and United States
The v between party names is short for versus and is conventionally read aloud as 'and' in English civil practice and as 'against' in criminal practice, never as 'vee' in court.
England and Wales
A line of text combining italic party names, a lower-case v, a year in square or round brackets, capitalised abbreviations and one or two numerals.
The neutral citation is one form a case reference takes.