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Bluebook Citation: State Statutes

This guide covers an overview of Bluebook citations, FAQs, and supplemental material to aid in your legal citations.

State Statutory Codes

State statutes can also have official and unofficial codes. If the official code is available and unchanged since the last publication or supplement/pocket part, The Bluebook requires you to cite to the official code. (Rule 12.2.1)

Table 1 provides a list of statutory codes in each state with indication on which code is the official/preferred code to cite to, along with the abbreviation of the code. Illinois' can be found on page 255.

The preferred/official code in Illinois is the Illinois Complied Statutes; however, there are has unofficial codes, West's Smith-Hurd Illinois Complied Statutes Annotated found on Westlaw, and Illinois Complied Statutes Annotated produced by LexisNexis. 

Citing Official State Statutory Codes

As mentioned above, Table 1 provides the citation formatting for each state's statutory codes, both official and unofficial. 

In Illinois, a citation to the official statutory publisher (Illinois Complied Statutes) has the following elements:

  1. Chapter Number
  2. Ill. Comp. Stat. (abbreviation for the code listed in Table 1)
  3. Act Number 
  4. Forward Slash (/)
  5. Section Number
  6. Year of Code*

*Just as federal statute years, state statute dates is the year the statutory code was published, not the date the statute was enacted or last amended. 

NOTE: The Illinois Complied Statutes official publication is not available in print anymore; if you are citing to current Illinois statutes, found through the Illinois General Assembly website, check out "Online Statutes" under the "Statutes" heading above. 

Citing Unofficial State Statutory Codes

If you are citing to one of the unofficial codes in Illinois, those citations contain these following elements:

  1. Chapter Number
  2. Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. (abbreviation for the code listed in Table 1)
  3. Act Number 
  4. Forward Slash (/)
  5. Section Number
  6. Publisher Name (West or LexisNexis)
  7. Year of Code*

*Just as federal statute years, state statute dates is the year the statutory code was published, not the date the statute was enacted or last amended. 

Here is an example for court documents:

75 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 12/10 (LexisNexis 2024)

Here is the same example, but for law review article footnotes:

75 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 12/10 (LexisNexis 2024)

Supplements & Pocket Parts

Like federal statutory codes, state statutory codes in print are updated with supplements or pocket parts. Rule 12.3.1(e) applies to citing the material within supplements or pocket parts of state statutory codes.