How to read a citation
Every case on this site drags a string of numbers behind it, like (2016) 2 Cal.5th 257. Most legal websites hope you’ll glide past the string. We would rather you learn to read it — partly because it takes five minutes, and mostly because it is the key that lets you check whether we are telling you the truth.
1 · The anatomy, in one sentence
Take Augustus v. ABM Security Services (2016) 2 Cal.5th 257 — the on-call rest-break case from our security guide. The parts, left to right: the parties (worker versus company, and the order tells you who sued); the year the court decided it; then an address in a law library: volume 2 of the reporter called Cal.5th, starting at page 257. That’s all a citation is — a street address for an opinion. Volume, series, page. Anyone who tells you legal citation is arcane is describing the exceptions, not the rule.
2 · What the reporter’s name tells you
The middle token carries more information than it looks like. Cal.5th means the Supreme Court of California, in the fifth series of its official reports — the court has been deciding cases long enough to have filled four numbered series before this one, which is why our table of authorities runs from Tameny at 27 Cal.3d 167 through the modern cases in Cal.5th: the series number is a rough carbon-dating of the law. Cal.App. in the middle means the Court of Appeal — binding authority statewide unless another district disagrees, but one rung down; when this library rests a claim on the Supreme Court, that is a choice you can now see us making. And a U.S.-style cite — Morgan v. Sundance (2022) 596 U.S. 411 — is the Supreme Court of the United States, whose employment decisions arrive in California law the way our federal triptych describes: sometimes as commands, sometimes as weather.
3 · The invisible asterisks
Two things a citation won’t show you, and a reader should know exist. First, unpublished opinions: most Court of Appeal decisions are never published in the official reports, and a court rule forbids citing them as precedent — so an argument built on an unpublished case is an argument standing on air, which is why nothing on this site is.1 Second, history: an opinion can be granted review, superseded, or — rarely — ordered depublished, and a citation frozen in an old article can point at a building that has since been condemned. This is what our changelog is for: when the law moves under a piece, the piece moves, and the log records the move. A revision date on an article here is a promise that someone has checked whether the addresses still stand.
4 · Check our work — here’s the door
Everything we cite is readable, free, tonight. CourtListener hosts the opinions and their histories; Google Scholar’s case-law search does the same; the California courts publish their own. Paste a case name from our table of authorities into any of them and the opinion appears — the actual words, not our paraphrase. We keep the house style honest for exactly this reason: a citation is a promise that a stranger can check, and a firm whose product is trustworthy argument should be the easiest firm in California to audit. The table of authorities is a research aid. Check each citation, quotation, and subsequent history in the primary sources before relying on a proposition; this preview does not certify that those checks have been completed.
5 · Why we’re teaching you this
Not so you’ll read opinions for sport — though Augustus is shorter than you’d think and better written than most novels about security guards. We teach it for the same reason the whole library exists: the difference between a lawyer said so and here is the authority, and here is how to verify it is the difference between marketing and analysis. When an employer’s lawyer, or an internet forum, or, yes, this site tells you what the law is, you now hold the five-minute skill that converts the claim into a checkable address. Use it on us first. We built the table of authorities so you’d have somewhere to practice.
Notes
- Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.1115 (unpublished opinions generally may not be cited).
Related writing: Table of authorities · What we changed, and why · Three federal decisions California workers should know
Article states California practice as of the revision date.
This article states California law as of its revision date and is analysis, not legal advice. Reading this site does not create an attorney-client relationship. Attorney advertising.