Example: United States Code Legislation Correct reference: Homeland Security Act of 2002, 6 U.S.C. § 101 (2002). Data entry: Example: Unreported cases Correct reference: Gilliard v. Oswald, no. 76–2109 (2d Cir. 16 March 1977). Data entry: By far the most common legal citation style in the UK is OSCOLA, the Oxford University standard for citing legal authorities. The citation style available in Zotero for OSCOLA was commissioned by members of Oxford Law School and is capable of producing almost any type of article listed in the guide, but requires very specific (and sometimes somewhat idiosyncratic) data entry into Zotero. To facilitate this task, a public Zotero group includes sample references based on the examples in the OSCOLA guide. The Zotero settlement model works well for citations of U.S. regulations, but there are some fields missing that are essential to citing the Canadian Charter (e.g., volume of law, jurisdiction, chapters, etc.).
Similarly, the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (AGLC) is the predominant legal style in Australia. The AGLC style available in Zotero was written to support almost all types of items in AGLC, using data entry conventions similar to those used for OSCOLA. A public group with examples of AGLC is being prepared. The Zotero case model lacks some fields that are essential to Canadian legal citation. For example, there is no field for a neutral quote or an electronic quote. There are also no fields for parallel citations. The most common standards for U.S. legal citations, as prescribed in the Bluebook and followed by most general styles such as the Chicago Manual of Style, distinguish between citations about cases reported in federal reports and unreported cases.
Zotero`s citation styles distinguish these two based on the presence or absence of a journalist in the data. Recommendation: Create a note attached to the article record for the case, then add the neutral citation (if available) and any parallel citations to the note, as shown below: The two main types of articles supported for U.S. legal citations are Cases and Legislation in Zotero. The template for business in Zotero is designed to include a printed legal report citation. If a case contains one or more printed quotes, fill in the template with one of these quotes (preferably the most official quote from the journalist), as shown below: Recommendation: Enter the full citation of the law, including the volume of the law, jurisdiction, year and chapter number, in the « Code » field, as shown below. Example: Reported cases Correct reference: Eaton v. IBM Corp., 925 F. Supp. 487 (Tex. S.D. 1996).
Data entry: Like cases, the practice of legal citation distinguishes between the laws cited in the United States Code (U.S.C.) and no as yet codified statutes cited by its public law number and their reference in the U.S. statutes as a whole (Stat.). Zotero distinguishes the two based on the existence of a public number. Zotero has limited support for creating citations for US and UK legal affairs and laws. Support for legal citations from other jurisdictions is even more limited. For lawyers or researchers who are an excellent source of legal sources, we recommend considering Juris-M, an unofficial community-focused version of Zotero specifically designed to comply with legal citation requirements. While we recommend Juris-M for heavy or common legal citations, it is possible to create an appropriate citation for basic legal citations in Zotero, especially if only a few such citations are needed. Citations on cases reported from databases such as WestLaw or Lexis are not currently adequately substantiated.
If you`re not sure which reference management software best suits your needs, check out our: Zotero is a reference management software for collecting, storing, sharing, managing, and citing sources. This is the cloud version of Zotero. You can log in and create an account easily. Use the online account to sync your Zotero library to the cloud and between computers. It also allows you to share references between accounts. Zotero helps you organize and track research and prepare your work.
