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SJD Seminar and Thesis Formatting

This guide was created to answer questions that SJD students frequently ask the library staff about formatting their theses.

Citation FAQs

These are some areas that many students find challenging:

  1. Pinpoint citations: A proper bluebook citation to a journal article or book includes the page on which the quote or assertion appears.  In this example, I am citing a quote that appears on page 258:

Jeremy Stone Weber, Defining Cyberlibel: A First Amendment Limit for Libel Suits against Individuals Arising from Computer Bulletin Board Speech, 46 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 235, 258 (1995), https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/caselrev/vol46/iss1/7.

  1. Quotations in footnotes: When using someone else's words in a footnote, one must use quotation marks and cite the source. The two ways to do this are a parenthetical or including the citation after the quote, like this:

Jeremy Stone Weber, Defining Cyberlibel: A First Amendment Limit for Libel Suits against Individuals Arising from Computer Bulletin Board Speech, 46 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 235, 258 (1995), https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/caselrev/vol46/iss1/7 ("Defamation that occurs over computer bulletin board systems is best categorized as libel rather than its sibling tort, slander").

"Defamation that occurs over computer bulletin board systems is best categorized as libel rather than its sibling tort, slander." Jeremy Stone Weber, Defining Cyberlibel: A First Amendment Limit for Libel Suits against Individuals Arising from Computer Bulletin Board Speech, 46 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 235, 258 (1995), https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/caselrev/vol46/iss1/7.

  1. Id and Supra:  You can only use "Id." if the previous footnote only contains a single source. When using supra, you need to give information about the source, in addition to the footnote where it appeared.  For example:

Footnote 1:  Jeremy Stone Weber, Defining Cyberlibel: A First Amendment Limit for Libel Suits against Individuals Arising from Computer Bulletin Board Speech, 46 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 235, 258 (1995), https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/caselrev/vol46/iss1/7 ("Defamation that occurs over computer bulletin board systems
is best categorized as libel rather than its sibling tort, slander"); Joseph Custer, Cancel Culture and Censorship Effects, 102 Univ. Det. Mercy L. Rev, 51, 52 (2024) ("Exceptions to free speech protections are images, ideas, or information regarding ...defamatory speech") (internal quotes omitted).

Footnote 2: Weber, supra note 1.

Footnote 3: Id. 

Because the Custer article is with the Weber article in footnote 1, it is necessary to use supra to cite the Weber article, but because the Weber article is alone in footnote 2, it is OK to use id for footnote 3.

  1. Citing materials in non-Roman fonts: Bluebook Rule 20 is about documents in non-English languages. If the name of a work is not in a Roman font, transliterate it using "a standard transliteration system."  The Bluebook suggests the ALA-LC Romanization tables.