Style question: Court opinions

Calorion · 2025-01-07T18:08:14+00:00

I’m probably doing something wrong, but it seems to me that none of the built-in styles handle court opinions correctly. Even [Bluebook Law Review](https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=id:bluebook-law-review) doesn’t seem to.

https://libguides.marshall.edu/basic_legal_research/case_citations says that Roe v. Wade in Bluebook should look like `Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)`. But in Zotero it comes out as `Blackmun et al., Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108713/roe-v-wade (last visited Jan 7, 2025).`

Similarly, MLA is apparently supposed to show `Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113-178. Supreme Court of the United States. 1973. LexisNexis Academic. n.d. Web. 4 April 2016.`, but in Zotero it is `Blackmun, et al. “Roe v. Wade.” U.S., vol. 410, 70-18, 22 Jan. 1973, p. 113, https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108713/roe-v-wade.`

In other words, bibliography entries of court opinions are *not* supposed to include the author’s name, but all of them (with the exception of APA, I just noticed) do.

bwiernik · 2025-01-07T18:52:40+00:00

Formatting depends on the citation style you use. Some styles, such as APA, Chicago, and Bluebook, have specific formatting for legal items programmed, but other rely on generic formatting used across item types. Also, most legal data sources do not contain author information at all, absence of authors in testing data may explain why the Chicago and Bluebook styles don't omit this information.

Personally, I don't store author information for legal items in my data, but these styles could also be updated to omit the information automatically.

Calorion · 2025-01-07T18:56:02+00:00

>Personally, I don't store author information for legal items in my data

That makes sense, but Zotero imports it automatically, at least from CourtListener, so you’d have to manually remove it.

adamsmith · 2025-01-07T19:24:45+00:00

I think we have a PR for bluebook to remove that info in the style.
It might also make sense to change the creator type on import, though -- opinion authors are, afaik, never cited as traditional authors.

Calorion · 2025-01-08T02:58:22+00:00

Digging into this, APA has everything seemingly correct by Bluebook rules (at least according to the comments), which should be able to be easily imported into any style (I just did so with my custom style)