WAYS TO READ CITATITON

In legal parlance, “Legal citation” is understood to be a reference to a particular legal source. It encodes information such as volume, reported designation, year of the case and other information pertaining to the parties. It is essential to follow a particular standard while writing a citation to easier to search for cases. For all those who are pursuing law as a professional career, comprehending how to read a case law citation is an imperative skill.This article will therefore help to understand the ways to read a case law citation. 

Reading a Case Citation

Cases are published in reporters’. A case citation is generally made up of the following parts:

1. the names of the parties involved in the lawsuit
2. the volume number of the reporter containing the full text of the case
3. the abbreviated name of that case reporter
4. the page number on which the case began along with the year of the case and its decision;
5.  Name of the court deciding the case.

Below is an example of a case citation:

1. Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, AIR 1973 SC 1461

In the example above, “Kesavananda Bharati” is the Plaintiff/ Petitioner whereas,“State of Kerala” is the Defendant/ Respondent. “v.” refers to versus. “AIR” refers to All India Reporter which is a Law Journal/Reports. The case was published with its verdict in year “1973” by the Supreme Court (“SC”) of India. This case can be found on the beginning of journal page number “1461”. 

2. S. R. Bommai v. Union of India [1994] 2 SCR 644: AIR 1994 SC 1918: (1994)3 SCC1

Here, the Petitioner is “S.R. Bommai” versus the Respondent “Union of India”. The case after its verdict was announced was published in the “1994” in the Volume “2” of Law Journal/ Reports of “SCR” Supreme Court Records, beginning on page number “644”.

Similarly, this particular case law was also published by the Law Journal/ Reports of “All India Reporter” in the year “1994”, decision which was made by the “SC” Supreme Court of India, beginning on page number “1918”. Likewise, reported in the year “1994”, Volume “3” of Supreme Court Cases (“SCC”).

This is known as Equivalent or Parallel Citations which means sometimes there can be more than one citation for a particular case. 

3. Surjya Kumar Das v. Maya Dutta AIR 1982 Cal 222,

High Courts of India uses “AIR” which means All India Reporter, to publish most of its nationwide judgements. An AIR High Court judgement looks like the example above stated in point 3. 

In this Case citation, the case after its judgement was published in AIR on 1982. “Cal” refers to Calcutta or now Kolkata, which means the High Court of Calcutta announced the verdict of the case and is printed on page number “222.”