The citation specification includes two requirements: one is that the source must be indicated for reference, and the other is that the citation form should be unified.
First of all, references must indicate the source.
In writing legal papers, the function of citation mainly includes three aspects: (1) helping readers to identify and relocate the source works. (2) Prove that the viewpoints of the paper are obtained through full research; Provide evidence that this position has been fully studied. (3) Respect the authors who put forward original ideas and theories: give affirmation to the authors who put forward original concepts or theories. In addition, when reading some papers, we often see a phenomenon of citation generalization, that is, citation does not reflect the above functions. For example, citing the common sense of academic circles as the views of some famous professors, citing some basic facts and common sense as the results of individual articles, and so on.
Second, the citation form should be unified.
Unified citation format means that the format of the guide text must be unified in the whole text according to the requirements of standardization and follow the relevant requirements. In English thesis writing, there are many reference standards for citation format. In the citation format automatically generated by Google Academic Search, there are three options: MLA, APA, GB/T 77 14, and the third is the national standard "Description Rules of References after Documents" issued by China National Standardization Administration Committee, which is widely used in the citation norms of graduation papers of domestic universities and academic journals of science and engineering. In addition, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has issued the international standard ISO 690: 20 10 (Information and Literature-Guide to Literature Reference and Information Resources Citation), which is dedicated to promoting the international unification of literature citation formats. The standardization of citation format is conducive to the information processing of literature data, and then serves many aspects such as academic influence evaluation.
At present, various literature citation norms are recommended. Various research institutions and academic journals often choose one of them or create their own format as the adoption format according to the characteristics of documents in this field. As for the citation format of legal papers, the periodical alliance, mainly Harvard Law Review, has developed its own blue book, which is the mainstream citation format of legal documents in the English-speaking world. In addition, APA and Martin are also adopted by many legal research institutions and academic journals. Therefore, this paper introduces the basic situation of Blue Book, APA and Martin respectively.
1. blue book reference format
The full names of the Blue Books are Blue Books: Unified English Citation System and Blue Books: Unified Chinese Annotation System. In the process of use, it is generally directly called the blue book, which is the most widely used legal citation guide in the United States. The Blue Book was written by the editorial boards of Harvard Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review and Yale Law Review. The first edition of the Blue Book was published in 1926, and now the twentieth edition has been published. The Blue Book is a reference guide for most law schools in the United States and a citation format used by most federal courts in the United States. Of course, the Supreme Court of the United States has its own citation format, and each state only abides by its own citation format in its own court system.
The Blue Book is a 560-page book, which lists the citation forms of various documents in detail. In the book, you can see the English citation methods of Chinese documents, and you can also see various citation forms of the same document. In the citation standards of each kind of literature, the Blue Book lists many different citation situations and citation forms for readers to choose from. For example, for works, he lists different citation forms of one author, two authors and more than three authors, and lists different citation forms of one author's works for readers to choose and apply. Under other resources such as periodical papers and electronic documents, examples are also given in various forms as far as possible.
On the one hand, the detailed citation specification of the Blue Book has been praised by the encyclopedia, on the other hand, it has been criticized for being too complicated. For example, the University of Chicago directly simplified the Blue Book into Maroonbook, which increased the convenience of application. In a word, the Blue Book is a necessary book for writing legal papers, but users don't need to read the full text, just look at it when they need to use it. Especially for some documents that are not mentioned in other citation specifications, the blue book often allows you to find out its citation form.
Although the blue book is a necessary reference book, it is not provided to the society for free, and users need real money to buy it. In the first 50 years of the publication of the Blue Book, the copyright income of the book has been occupied by Harvard Law Review 100%, while Columbia Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review and Yale Law Review did not realize this problem until 1974. Finally, after argumentation, Harvard Law Review shares 40% of the profits, and the other three companies share 20% of the profits. Harvard Law Review is responsible for production and sales. In addition, I remember that in the course of China-Europe Law School of China University of Political Science and Law, an American professor who teaches legal research and writing specifically asked the copyright owner of TheBluebook if he could authorize the free copying of 40 copies for teaching. The copyright owner of the blue book clearly replied that it must be paid to use it, and finally the school paid to get the right to copy dozens of copies. In Amazon, the current 20th edition of the Blue Book costs about $32. The electronic version of the blue book can't be obtained for free online. Other ways of obtaining electronic versions or photocopies can be handled by themselves according to the fair use rules of the copyright law.
2.APA document citation format
The full English name of APA format is the American Psychological Association Publishing Manual, that is, the Journal Guide of American Psychological Association. It is published by the American Psychological Association and widely used in various social sciences, including law. The APA format originated from 1929, which was only seven pages at that time and was published in Psychological Bulletin. At present, APA has been published in the sixth edition (ISBN 9781433805615), with a total of 272 pages.
In APA format, the citation is not as complicated as the blue book, and its citation format is easier for readers to write down and master. However, APA doesn't explain the special cases such as case citations commonly found in legal papers, which leads to the need for legal papers in APA format to be used together with the Blue Book.
In order to have an intuitive understanding of the format of the advance pricing arrangement, the following examples are given:
Thesis works: Finney, J. (1970). Over and over again. New york, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Papers and periodicals: American text (1990). The transformation of teacher education special education. Teacher Education and Special Education: Journal of Teacher Education Department of the Council for Special Children, 13(3-4), 147- 148.
The sixth edition of APA also specially added the reference specifications of Kindle e-books, such as Eggers, D. (2008). Circle [Kindle edition]
APA format is also a work protected by copyright, and the price is about $ 15. At the same time, the electronic version of the sixth edition of the book can be retrieved on Google.
3. Martin literature citation format
The full English name of Martin format is Introduction to Basic Legal Citation, that is, Guide to Basic Legal Citation. It was founded by Professor Peter Martin, former dean of Cornell University Law School. Martin format was originally born in the revision of 1993 and 20 16, with 500 pages. This format is simpler and easier to understand than the blue book, and at the same time, it supplements the shortcomings of APA format in quoting legal papers. In addition, the Martin format is provided to the public free of charge by the author through the Internet, and can be modified in time without being limited by the publishing cycle of the paper version.
In the first chapter of Martin format, the main literature citation forms are comprehensively summarized and explained in detail. Therefore, for beginners, reading the first chapter of Martin format directly can master the basic skills of English literature citation.
abstract
Various reference format specifications provide a variety of reference formats. Without other requirements, students only need to ensure the consistency of the text. In addition, the above-mentioned English citation formats must be mastered and used in writing English papers. I hope all students can master the citation format of the above legal papers! The answer comes from Meeloun, the original link.