Laws and Legal Citations
Laws and Legal Citations
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (the Publication Manual) does not include information on citing Canadian laws and legislation. In Canada, the standard for legal citations can be found in the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (2023). Students should refer to this guide to make sure that their legal citations are correct. The information below was adapted from the University of Alberta Library’s page on citing case law and legislation, which they have shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. It was also verified using the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation. The authors of this text extend their thanks to the team at the University of Alberta Library for sharing their work.
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Please Note! The authors of this manual are not experts in legal citations. Students should check the the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (2023) to verify citation formats.
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Citing Statutes
The citation for an act or statute uses the following format:
Name of the Act, the Jurisdiction, the year it was passed, and the volume and chapter number where it is found.
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Hint! The jurisdiction refers to where the act was passed, either federally, or in a province or territory, e.g.: Canada’s Access to Information Act is cited as, Access to Information Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. A 1.
This means that the Access to Information Act can be found in chapter A-1 of the 1985 Revised Statutes of Canada.
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Citing Bills
A bill is a proposed act tabled in a legislature or parliament. Bills are debated, amended, and passed into law as a statute or act. There can be multiple versions on a bill, and some bills are never passed as acts. This means that it’s important to note which version of a bill is being referenced.
The citation for bill uses the following format:
Name of the Bill, the Jurisdiction, the year it was passed, and the volume and chapter number where it is found.
Example
Ontario ’s Environmental Bill of Rights is cited as, Environmental Bill of Rights, S.O. 1993, c. 28
This means that the Environmental Bill of Rights can be found in chapter 28 of the 1993 Statutes of Ontario.
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Citing Cases
Canadian courts adopted neutral citations for cases starting in the 1990s. Neutral citations are issued by the court or tribunal. If no neutral citation for the decision is available, then a parallel citation either to a print reporter citation or citation to an electronic source is needed. Never create a neutral citation if one does not exist.
Neutral citations use the following format:
Case Name, year, court/tribunal, decision number, pinpoint if applicable.
Example
The case R. v. Lindsay is cited as, R. v. Lindsay, 2023 SCC 33
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In-Text Citations of Legal Materials (11.3)
The Publication Manual states that, “although the reference format for legal materials differs from that of other kinds of works cited in APA publications, in-text citations are formed in approximately the same way and serve the same purpose. Most legal reference entries begin with the title of the work; as a result, most in-text citations consist of the title and year” (p. 357).
Narrative Citation
R. v. Lindsay (2023)
Parenthetical Citation
(R. v. Lindsay, 2023)
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Sources
Canadian guide to uniform legal citation. (10th edition). (2023). Thomson Reuters.
The University of Alberta Library. (2023). APA citation style (7th edition): Case law & legislation. https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/apa-citation-style/case-law
