Chapter 5 answers

For Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986): 477 is the reporter volume, 242 the first page, 248 the pinpoint, and 1986 the decision year.

These fields answer separate retrieval questions. The volume and first page locate the reported decision. The pinpoint locates the majority's discussion used for the particular proposition. The year places that decision in time. In the cited passage, the majority explains when a dispute about a material fact is genuine; the example does not use 242 as the passage address.

Do not mistake 248 for a different decision's starting page or assume 1986 is the publication's volume number. A database may display several numbers, but their order in a search result does not establish their legal citation functions.

Label every number with its role. If you change the proposed sentence, recheck 248 first; if the source remains this opinion, the volume, first page, and decision year should remain fixed.

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986).

Restore 242 as the decision's first page, retain 248 as the inspected pinpoint, and replace the access year 2026 with the decision year 1986. The two errors concern different facts: one loses the reported decision's starting address, and the other misdates the judicial event. Both repairs come from the supplied model, not from inference based on when the opinion was downloaded.

Fixing only the year leaves 248 misleadingly positioned as the first page. Fixing only the page leaves a false decision year. A citation manager may accept either malformed record unless its underlying source fields are checked separately.

Compare the corrected form field by field with the source card. You should have two page numbers in the full citation and one decision-year parenthetical. Preserve any access date in the research record rather than deleting it.

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

Vega v. N. Harbor Corp., 12 F.3d 100, 106 (9th Cir. 2001).

The supplied name already implements the intended citation abbreviations. 12 identifies the volume; F.3d identifies Federal Reporter, Third Series; 100 identifies the beginning; 106 identifies the passage. Because that reporter contains decisions from multiple federal appellate courts, the Ninth Circuit belongs in the parenthetical before the decision year. The dates and numbers are supplied training metadata, not a real authority.

Do not use a district-court abbreviation, omit the circuit because the case is federal, or change N. to North after the packet expressly supplies the citation-name form. Do not treat 106 as the first page.

Check the final order: name, 12, F.3d, 100, 106, 9th Cir., 2001. Each item should match the packet. Keep the fictional label when the answer is encountered independently; the realistic reporter form must not be mistaken for an actual case.

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

Before finalizing, obtain the complete case identity, court, decision date, reporter or other source information, the dissent's actual pinpoint, the dissenting judge's name if supplied, and the precise passage supporting the sentence.

The search label Vega does not distinguish the majority from the dissent. Source identity and opinion identity are separate decisions. Once the dissent is located, identify its status in the sentence or citation and describe the view as that of the dissent, not as a holding of the court. Inspect the majority as needed to understand the disagreement.

Do not manufacture a dissent page or a judge's name from the fact that the file contains separate opinions. Nor should you attach a majority pinpoint to the dissent's position just because both share the same caption.

Your finished source card should tell another reader which opinion contains the helpful words, where they appear, and whose reasoning they are. If any of those fields remains unknown, the citation is not yet ready.

A reporter may identify the state without identifying the court level. If it includes or corresponds to decisions from more than one court, the citation may still need an intermediate appellate court designation or other court information.

Court identity matters to retrieval and to evaluating authority. Knowing the jurisdiction is not necessarily enough to distinguish a supreme court decision from an appellate decision. The omission rule turns on what the citation establishes under the applicable convention and receiving instructions, not on how familiar the case is.

Do not use a blanket rule that every state-specific reporter eliminates the court parenthetical. Do not include a trial court solely because its judgment was appealed; the cited opinion belongs to the court that issued it. The packet supplies no particular state exception to apply.

Ask whether a reader could identify the deciding court, including its level, from the citation as written. If the answer is merely 'some court in this state', inspect the court field and relevant citation requirement again.

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

Use 2018, the decision year, in the ordinary reported-case parenthetical.

The 2019 volume-release date describes publication, and the 2026 date describes access. Neither substitutes for when the opinion was decided. Before adopting another date, check whether you are actually citing a corrected or later opinion, a different disposition, a slip or database form requiring a fuller date, or another source-specific convention. The ordinary pattern should not be displaced simply by choosing the newest visible date.

Do not combine 2018 and 2019 as though the opinion spanned both years. Do not assume a website's 2026 update created a new judicial decision. Those events may deserve separate research fields without belonging in this citation's year slot.

Record decision, publication, and retrieval on separate lines. The model citation should contain 2018 unless an inspected source and applicable convention establish a concrete reason for another form.

A publisher's headline may accurately identify the matter while retaining given names, multiple parties, descriptors, or wording unsuitable for the citation-name convention. Build the name from the actual decision and then apply the applicable name rules.

The task is controlled shortening, not copying or freehand editing. A full caption can include people and procedural material that citation conventions omit; a headline can also omit information needed to distinguish opinions. Textual names and citation names have different abbreviation limits, so the place where the name appears matters.

Do not assume that shortening means deleting every first word, every business suffix, or all procedural expressions. In re may identify a proceeding, a person's given name may be part of a business name, and a nonredundant corporate designation may need to remain.

Compare the proposed name with the opinion's identity and the relevant name rule. Another reader should still recover the correct case, and every deletion or abbreviation should have a reason beyond making the line shorter.

Fictional training example — not legal authority.

Repair the notes to 12 F.3d 100 and preserve that series in the finished citation.

F. and F.3d identify different reporter series. A volume number and page can recur in different series, so dropping 3d may lead to another publication location. The source supplies F.3d; restoring it is an identity repair even though the change is only two characters. Any pinpoint still must be collected and checked separately.

Do not treat the series as optional decoration or infer it solely from a year. Do not modernize all Federal Reporter references to the newest series. The citation describes the actual publication containing this decision, not the edition of your writing template.

Compare the source and source card character by character at the reporter field. Both should show F.3d with the supplied volume 12 and first page 100. If you reopen a different series, the retrieval test has failed.

Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. 650, 660 (2014) (per curiam).

The opinion's own heading identifies the Court's text as per curiam; the database's combined-opinion label describes the packaged record containing more than one text. Page 660 belongs to the Court's disposition and reservation. U.S. identifies the Supreme Court, while the separate status parenthetical performs the different task of identifying the opinion form.

To cite the separate discussion at 662, inspect the boundary and attribute it to Justice Alito's concurrence in the judgment, joined by Justice Scalia, using the proper status and pinpoint. Do not carry per curiam across that boundary merely because both opinions appear in one electronic file.

Check the heading above the selected passage and the page where the separate opinion begins. A citation to 660 should match the Court's text; a citation to 662 should identify Alito's different opinion and avoid calling his reasoning the Court's holding.

If discussing only the cited Court passage, the per curiam model is the requested answer. A separate-opinion citation would use '(Alito, J., concurring in the judgment)' and the independently inspected page.