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My question is pretty much what the title says. I'm using biblatex and having a very tough time figuring out what the proper way is to cite a particular article, section, etc of the Constitution (I'm actually working on the California Constitution, but it's the same question). None of the biblatex entry types seem to ask for the proper information.

lockstep
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NickO
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  • @moewe Thanks for taking a look. I've never heard of any of those, but a quick glance at oscla looks like either that or biblatex is what I'm probably looking for. I'm using biblatex currently for my other citations simply because it is what I've done in the past. – NickO Sep 12 '13 at 13:37
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    oscola is a style for biblatex, so you will not have to give up using it. Just choose the style that fits your needs best as a basis and modify it to give exactly the result you expect. – moewe Sep 12 '13 at 13:43
  • I see, thanks! I'll have to spend a little time getting familiar with it. – NickO Sep 12 '13 at 13:44
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    If citations for constitutions require a new bibliography entry, the following question shows how this can be done quite easily in biblatex. Creating Entry in Bibtex for Executive Orders. – Alan Munn Sep 20 '13 at 20:55

1 Answers1

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Law citations are always quite tricky, but there are some biblatex styles implementing the complicated requirements. A list of styles with support for legal citations that goes beyond what the standard styles offer can be found in What is best practice re. handling legal sources with Biblatex/Biber for disciplines other than law?. American styles are currently not very well supported, there are no full styles for Bluebook and ALWD (see Bluebook support in Latex?), though biblatex-chicago implements a subset of Bluebook recommendations.

Following the Introduction to Basic Legal Citation, the following might be a good way to start.

\documentclass[american]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=authoryear,backend=biber,date=short,maxcitenames=2]{biblatex}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}


\DeclareFieldFormat[legislation]{title}{#1}
\renewcommand*{\postnotedelim}{%
  \ifentrytype{legislation}%
    {\addspace}%
    {\addcomma\space}%
}


\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@legislation{USConst,
  title       = {Constitution of the United States},
  shorthand   = {U.S.~Const.},
  year        = {1787},
}
\end{filecontents}


\begin{document}
  \cite[art.~III, \S~2, cl.~2.]{USConst}
  \printbibliography
\end{document}

One might also like to get rid of the year (especially for the constitution and other basic laws, as well as for laws that contain the date in their title, e.g. "Representation of the People Act 2000" or "The Eggs and Chicks (England) Regulations 2009").

Note also that older versions of the MLA style guide do not even require the Constitution be listed in the works cited (with the approach above it looks indeed a bit lonely).

moewe
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  • Should this answer be updated to mention biblatex-chicago? – Una Sep 19 '20 at 21:21
  • @Una Good point. List answers like this do get outdates quite quickly. I removed the list and pointed to an answer with a newer list that also mentions biblatex-chicago. – moewe Sep 20 '20 at 06:33