Citing U.S. Code and other compiled laws

robheimburger
Hello,

I am trying to get Zotero to manage citations from the U.S. Code, a compilation of federal law. For instance, I want to cite

28 U.S. Code § 1291 (1994).

In the Statute item type, I enter 28 as Code Number, U.S. Code as Code, and 1291 as Section, but the only thing that appears in a citation is

U.S. Code (1994) - in Bluebook
U.S. Code, 1994. - in Chicago (16th ed., full date)

whether I use Chicago (16th ed., full date) or Bluebook Law Review. To display something roughly close to what I want, I end up inserting "28 U.S. Code" in the Title and then entering 1291 as the section. Is there a way to get Zotero to display U.S. Code citations?

By the way, this older discussion didn't provide an answer:
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/132/bluebook-statutes/

Similar issues come up when citing a complied Congressional act like this:

Immigration and Nationality Act § 212
  • adamsmith
    There is not a good way and if you work a lot with legal citations you should look at MLZ:
    http://citationstylist.org/
    Generally speaking, the code number cannot be cited, so I'd include that in the code field, but otherwise your data entry sounds ok and the styles need to be adjusted. Since it's only somewhat possible to get legal citations right, that isn't a high priority.

    But also, I have never seen a citation like this - aren't you supposed to add the name of a statute? To me, a standard citation of a statute in US Code would look something like this:
    Homeland Security Act of 2002, 6 U.S.C. § 101 (2002).
    (that's the CMoS example, I believe bluebook is the same).
  • fncll
    I'm having some trouble with APA citations and US Legal code. I am attempting to cite

    43 U.S. Code § 33 but am having multiple issues. I have chosen the 'Statute' type and entered title, code "U.S. Code", Code Number 43, Section 33.

    The resulting APA in-text cite generated by Zotero looks like this:

    Alaska Native Claims Settlement of 1971. , U.S. Code § 33

    I believe it should look like this:

    Alaska Native Claims Settlement of 1971, 43 U.S. Code § 33.

    Where do I put the "43" in the info section so it appears properly? And why the extra period and space before the proper comma?
  • adamsmith
    The 43 currently has to go into the Code field, Zotero doesn't make Code number available to citation styles.

    The period is a problem in APA. I'll fix that, but won't be super-quick.
  • emiliehunter
    I use the OSCOLA plug-in for public international law citation, but there are a number of fields that are missing which make it difficult to properly cite the breadth of decisions, orders, judgements of international court chambers as well as the submissions of interested parties - prosecution, defence, victims representatives, amici, or the transcripts from proceedings.

    This is a common problem that law researchers face at my institute and is one reason why Zotero is frequently abandoned.

    As I am not a coder, and dont know how to start, I would be interested in working with people who can, to create a full and decent citation style that satisfies international law outputs.
  • adamsmith
    you want to have a look at http://citationstylist.org/ a Zotero fork for legal citations. The problem here isn't the citation style - OSCOLA is about as good as Zotero can do - but many as you say the fields are rather limiting (I'm not sure to what degree MLZ will be able to handle the requirement you describe, but it's certainly going to be better).

    For anything beyond that please start a new thread, let's keep this one on the much more narrow topics of citing US Code.
  • adamsmith
    APA style is now fixed and will handle statutes and other legal citations better - as per above the code number still needs to be entered in the "code" field.
  • mbudjeryn
    Dear all, I am having a similar problem with 'statute' citations: I cannot get Zotero to display either 'public law number' or the full date (mo/day/year). All I get is Author, Title, Year and URL link. Is there a way a researcher can choose the fields to be displayed in the citation?
  • adamsmith
    which fields are displayed depends on the citation style. Which are you using?
  • mbudjeryn
    I tried Chicago Manual Style and Turabian. Which style would display the fields I need?
  • mbudjeryn
    I also tried American Political Science Association, but that does not allow me to do a simple endnote, but instead puts the reference (in parenthesis) within the text.
  • Paul Gronke
    I am interested in this as well--does anyone know who maintains the American Political Science Association style? I am an editor of one of the APSA journals and may be able to get it changed to accommodate legal case citations if I can figure out who maintains the styles.
  • adamsmith
    Hi Paul, we know each other from the FB PoliSci group. I (Sebastian Karcher) maintain the APSA style. What exactly is your question?
    You edit P&S, right? While we're at it, do you know what APSA's et-al rules are? I've never been able to figure that out in a way that correspond to APSR.
  • Paul Gronke
    edited January 4, 2016
    Hey Adam! Didnt' realize you were the same person. My question is how to enter something from the U.S. Code and how this should be cited using the APSA style. I'm a bit disappointed but perhaps not surprised to see statutes and laws are barely mentioned in the guide.

    Nonetheless, the only thing I can figure out to do in the APSA style is to use the CASE document type, enter the name of the statute in AUTHOR, date of signing by the President in DATE, and then the US Code plus number in the TITLE field.

    This then gets formatted as (for example):

    Help America Vote Act, 2002, Public Law 42-146, United States Code .

    That's not even exactly right, if I understand correctly, the DATE should list the full date but the APSA style only lists the year.

    As to et al. rules, I can find out if you like.
  • adamsmith
    edited January 4, 2016
    I don't think I've done any work in the APSA style on statutes. The styleguide says on page 29:
    Administrative Procedure Act. 1946. Statutes at Large. Vol. 60, sec. 10, p. 243.

    You should enter this as a statute with:
    title: Administrative Procedure Act
    date: 1946
    code: Statutes at Large
    code number: 60
    section: 10
    pages: 243

    and we should be able to get this right according to the APSA style manual. That's from the Zotero side. If the style manual makes sense on this I can't tell you, not sure if that was part of the question.

    edit: to be clear -- when I say I maintain the APSA style, I'm referring to the Zotero/CSL implementation, not the actual style manual. I have no relation to that. If I had, it would disappear and just follow Chicago Manual...
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