Template:Cite Canadian Court

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This template is rated as alpha. It is ready for third party input, and may be used on a few pages to see if problems arise, but should be watched. Suggestions for new features or changes in their input and output mechanisms are welcome.

Usage

{{Cite Canadian Court
  |litigants=
  |decisionyear=
  |reporteryear=
  |vol=
  |reporter=
  |series=
  |page=
  |court=
  |url=
}}

optional: litigants is the list of litigants, such as R v. Macki. If a Wikipedia article by that name exists a link to it will be made.
optional: decisionyear is the year the decision came out
optional: reporterear is the year of the reporter, if necessary for the citation
optional: vol is the volume of the reporter.
optional: reporter is S.C.R. for Supreme Court Reporter.
optional: series is the series of the reporter (such as 2d or 3d).
optional: page is a specific reference.
optional: court is the court (such as "C.A." ). Not to be used for Supreme Court cases since it's implied with S.C.R.
optional: url is a URL with information on the case.

This template is based on information in the article Case citation and the template Cite Court

Legal Citation in 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 "The Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation", known as the "McGill Guide" after the McGill Law Journal that publishes it. The following format reflects this standard.

The standard case citation in Canada looks like this:

Hunter v. Southam, [1984] 2 S.C.R. 145.

The format can be broken into its component parts:

Style of cause	(year of decision),	[year of reporter]	volume	reporter	(series)	page	jurisdiction/court
R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd.,		[1985]	1	S.C.R.		295.
R. v. Oakes,		[1986]	1	S.C.R.		103.
Re Canada Trust Co. and O.H.R.C.	(1990),		69	D.L.R.	(4th)	321	(Ont. C.A.).

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 (eg. R. v. R.D.S.). 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.

Usually either the year of the decision or the year of the reporter is cited, but not usually both. Only if they are different years can they both be cited at the same time. If they are the same, one should always use the reporter year.

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, [2005] 1 S.C.R. 791.

This format was introduced in 2006. Prior to this format, the opposite order of parallel citation was used.

Reporters

Abbreviation	Reporter	years
Admin. L.R.	Administrative Law Reports	1983 - 1991
Admin. L.R. (2d)	Administrative Law Reports (second series)	1992 - 1998
Admin. L.R. (3d)	Administrative Law Reports (third series)	1999 -
A.N.W.T.Y.T.R.	Alberta, Northwest Territories & Yukon Tax Reporter	1973 -
A.C.W.S.	All Canada Weekly Summaries	1970-1979
A.C.W.S. (2d)	All Canada Weekly Summaries (second series)	1980-1986
A.R.	Alberta Reports	1976 -
C.C.L.T. (2d)	Canadian Cases on the Law of Torts
D.L.R.	Dominion Law Reports
D.L.R. (2d)	Dominion Law Reports (second series)
D.L.R. (3d)	Dominion Law Reports (third series)	- 1984
D.L.R. (4th)	Dominion Law Reports (fourth series)	1984 -
F.C.R.	Federal Court Reports	1971 -
N.B.R. (2d)	New Brunswick Reports	1969 -
N.R.	National Reporter
N.S.R. (2d)	Nova Scotia Reports	1969 -
O.R. (3d)	Ontario Reports	1986 -
S.C.R.	Supreme Court Reports	1970 -

Neutral citation

In 1999 the Canadian Judicial Council adopted a neutral citation standard for case law. The format provides a naming system that does not depend on the publication of the case a law report.

The standard format look like this:

Year of decision	Court identifier	Ordinal number
2000	SCC	1

There is a unique court identifier code for most courts. There are a few courts in Quebec and Ontario that have yet to adopt the system. A list of the court identifiers include:

Court Identifier	Court	from year
SCC	Supreme Court of Canada	2000
FCT	Federal Court of Canada - Trial Division	2001
FCA	Federal Court of Canada - Appeal Division	2001
TCC	Tax Court of Canada	2003
CMAC	Court Marital Appeal Court
Comp. Trib.	Competition Tribunal of Canada
BCCA	British Columbia Court of Appeal
BCSC	Supreme Court of British Columbia
BCPC	Provincial Court of British Columbia
BCHRT	British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal
BCSECCOM	British Columbia Securities Commission
ONCA	Ontario Court of Appeal
QCCA	Quebec Court of Appeal

References