Table BFree sample

Federal Courts & Agencies

Federal courts’ abbreviations and reporters, and how agency decisions are cited.

Use this table for the court part of a federal citation and for the series that prints a court’s or an agency’s decisions. It covers the Supreme Court, the 13 courts of appeals, all 94 district courts with their bankruptcy courts, the bankruptcy appellate panels, seven specialized courts, 16 military courts past and present, 11 former courts and 29 agencies and boards. Each court form is the one judges write most often in our court-written sample: 4,424 govinfo files (4,422 distinct texts) from the 2025 sitemaps, one court’s from 2024 (Table H). Its count of court-and-year parentheticals prints beside it, so every court form is a CONVENTION unless a panel labels it otherwise; a row without a count says what its form rests on. Name the court only when the reporter does not show it (14.3). Counted Oct. 11, 2026; reread, not recomputed, on Oct. 14, when all else was checked. The military courts’ earlier names and four of the former courts are counted instead in our corpus of 34,896 opinions, on Oct. 15, 2026, as their keys say.

The court part of a federal citation, step by step

1	Cited to U.S., S. Ct. or L. Ed., or to a reporter named for one court (Fed. Cl., CIT, T.C., Vet. App., Ct. Cl., Cl. Ct., B.T.A., C.M.A.)? Give the year alone.
2	A court of appeals: its circuit, with 2d and 3d (B.1).
3	A district court: its district with the compass word, never the division (B.2).
4	A bankruptcy court: Bankr. and the district. A bankruptcy appellate panel: B.A.P. and the circuit, but 10th Cir. BAP (B.3).
5	A military court: always named, under the name it had that day, because M.J. and C.M.R. print several (B.5). Any other specialized court as its row shows (B.4).
6	A court that no longer exists: the name it had when it decided the case (B.6).
7	An agency: the decision’s name, the agency’s series or number, and the decider and date the series leaves out (B.8).