CRIM 1160: Primary Legal Sources: Citing Case Law

The standard legal citation format in Canada is the "McGill style." The official manual is the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (10th ed.) and is available at the Research Help Desk. Call #: KE 259 C264 2023. This 10th edition has the following three citation patterns.

1. Neutral citation

• Almost all Canadian courts assign a neutral citation when a decision is rendered.  If there is a neutral citation, that is all you need to include.
  • Example:   R v Latimer, 2001 SCC 1.

Neutral citations include these elements:

•      the case name or "style of cause" (in italics e.g. R v Latimer,)
•      v to separate names
•      the year of the decision (2001)
•      the court identifier (e.g. - SCC for Supreme Court of Canada)
•      the decision number (also called case or docket number, e.g. 1)

2. No neutral citation (on CanLII)

• If there is no neutral citation, but there is a CanLII citation, list only the CanLII citation. This will apply mostly to older court cases.
  • Example:   Rodriguez v British Columbia (Attorney General), 1993 CanLII 75 SCC.

3. No neutral citation and no CanLII citation

• If there is no neutral citation and no CanLII citation either, provide two alternative parallel citations.
  • Example:   R v Cole, [2012] 3 SCR 34, 353 DLR (4th) 447.

Chapter 11 of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed., 2020) explains how to cite legal sources.

            "In APA Style, most legal materials are cited in the standard legal citation style used for legal references across all disciplines ... Existing legal references are usually already written in legal style and require few, if any, changes for an APA Style reference list entry" (APA, 2020, p. 355).

The APA manual mostly shows U.S. examples (and a few international ones), but it also says that you should use the legal citation style of your own country. In Canada, that’s the McGill Guide.

At Douglas College, this usually means:

• Use APA style for secondary legal sources, like journal articles and books.
• Use McGill style for primary legal sources, like cases and legislation.

Because instructors can have different expectations, it’s always best to ask your instructor what they prefer.

In-text citations

According to the APA (2020) manual "Most [primary] legal reference entries begin with the title of the work; as a result, most in-text citations consist of the title and year. ... If the title is long ... shorten it for the in-text citation, but give enough information in the in-text citation to enable readers to locate the entry in the reference list" (p. 357).

In-text citation for a case:

• Parenthetical citation (at the end of a sentence): (R v Latimer, 2001)
• Narrative citation (within a sentence): In R v Latimer (2001) ....

Developed in 2024 by a team of Canadian law librarians and updated in 2025, this new legal citation style guide offers a free, open-access alternative to the McGill Guide. However, the McGill Guide remains the most widely used format in Canadian courts and legal writing. This guide also includes guidance on citing AI-generated content which is not covered in the McGill guide.

• Canadian Open Access to Legal Citation Guide (COAL)