Case Citation - Canada

Canada

There are a number of citation standards in Canada. Many legal publishing companies and schools have their own practice for citation. Since the late 1990s, however, there has been a convergence among much of legal community to a single standard which has been formulated in The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, commonly known as the "McGill Guide" after the McGill Law Journal which first published it. The following format reflects this standard.

The standard case citation in Canada looks like this:

Hunter v Southam, 2 SCR 145.

The format can be broken into its component parts:

The Style of Cause is italicized as in all other countries and the party names are separated by "v" (English) or "c" (French). Prior to 1984 the appellant party would always be named first. However, since then case names do not switch order when the case is appealed.

Undisclosed parties to a case are represented by initials (e.g., R v RDS). Criminal cases are prosecuted by the Crown which is always represented by "R" for Regina (queen) or Rex (king). Constitutional references are always entitled "Reference re" followed by the subject title.

If the year of decision is the same as the year of the report, and the date is a part of the reporter's citation then the date need not be listed after the style of cause. If the date of the decision is different from the year of the report, then both should be shown.

Where available cases should be cited with their neutral citation immediately after the style of cause and preceding the print citation. For example,

Chaoulli v Quebec (Attorney General), 2005 SCC 35, 1 SCR 791.

This format was adopted as the standard in 2006, in the sixth edition of the McGill Guide. Prior to this format, the opposite order of parallel citation was used.

The seventh edition of the McGill Guide, published 2010-08-20, removes most full stop (".") characters from the citations (e.g., a citation to the Supreme Court Reports which would previously have been 1 S.C.R. 791, is now 1 SCR 791. Most full stops are also removed from styles of cause. The seventh edition also further highlights the significance of neutral citations (i.e., tribunal-assigned citations that are publisher-independent)