Legal sources are the one category where APA 7 stops using its own author-date formula. The Publication Manual (7th ed., Chapter 11) borrows the conventions of the US legal citation guide, The Bluebook, and gives examples only for United States materials. That leaves nursing, education, social work, business and public-health students in the UK, Canada and Australia guessing. This guide shows you exactly how to cite laws in APA 7 for all four countries, with reference-list and in-text forms, using examples checked against the official legislation databases and courts.

The Three Rules APA 7 Applies to Every Legal Source

Rule 1: What, where, when. A legal reference names the source, gives the place it is published (a volume of the United States Code, a law report, a chapter of the Revised Statutes of Canada) and ends with a year. There is no author element and no retrieval date.

Rule 2: Title-first in-text citations. Because the reference begins with a title, the parenthetical citation is the title and year, and the narrative citation is the title followed by the year in parentheses. Long statute names may be shortened after the first citation if the short form is unambiguous.

Rule 3: Italics are reversed for cases. A case name is written in plain type in the reference list and in italics in the text. A statute name is plain type everywhere. This is the rule students most often get backwards, and it is the first thing a marker checks.

For sources outside the United States, the Publication Manual advises that legal references are more useful when they follow the conventional legal citation format of the jurisdiction. University APA guides in the UK (Edinburgh Napier), Canada (University of Alberta, which points to the McGill Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation) and Australia (James Cook University, which points to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation) all interpret this the same way: keep the national citation inside the APA reference list, and use title-and-year in the text.

United States: U.S.C., C.F.R., Public Laws and Court Cases

How the FERPA example was built. The United States Code on the Government Publishing Office’s govinfo site lists the section as “20 U.S.C. §1232g. Family educational and privacy rights” inside Title 20, Chapter 31, Subchapter III, Part 4. The popular name of the Act supplies the “what,” the title and section supply the “where,” and the year of enactment supplies the “when.” Use a non-breaking space between § and the number so they never split across lines (in Word, Ctrl+Shift+Space; the § symbol itself is under Insert, Symbol).

How the Brown example was built. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute lists the decisions reported at 347 U.S. 483 under the caption “Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka.” APA shortens the caption to the first party on each side, drops “et al.” and the court’s location, and gives the year of decision. Because the reporter is U.S. (United States Reports), the court needs no separate abbreviation: it can only be the Supreme Court.

In text: (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, 1974); Brown v. Board of Education (1954) held that…; (Protection of Human Subjects, 2026). Law students writing for a law school should use The Bluebook directly rather than the APA adaptation; our Bluebook citation guide for law students covers that.

United Kingdom: Acts, Statutory Instruments and Cases

APA 7 has no UK examples, so UK universities adapt the “what, where, when” rule to the way legislation.gov.uk and the courts already cite themselves. The year is part of an Act’s title, which changes how the in-text citation looks.

The chapter numbers come from legislation.gov.uk, which heads each Act with its citation (the Data Protection Act is “2018 c. 12,” the Equality Act “2010 c. 15”). The Miller neutral citation is taken from the UK Supreme Court’s own case page, which gives the judgment date as 24 January 2017 and the neutral citation as [2017] UKSC 5. UK case names use “v” without a full stop and no comma before the year; keep that, because it is the conventional format APA asks you to preserve.

In text: Section 6 of the Equality Act 2010 defines disability…; (Data Protection Act 2018); R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (2017); (Donoghue v Stevenson, 1932). Note that for UK Acts the year sits inside the title, so no comma separates them. Students on law programmes should use OSCOLA instead; see our OSCOLA referencing guide.

Canada: RSC Statutes and Neutral Citations

Canadian APA guides direct students to the McGill Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation for the citation itself, noting that a McGill-style citation “would be well within APA standards.” The Justice Laws Website heads each federal statute with its official citation, which you copy into the reference list.

The Privacy Act citation is printed at the head of the Act on the Justice Laws Website as “Privacy Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. P-21)”; McGill style drops the periods and the parentheses. Canadian neutral citations place the year first without brackets, followed by the court code (ABCA for the Alberta Court of Appeal, SCC for the Supreme Court of Canada) and the decision number. The Alberta examples come from the University of Alberta’s APA guide.

In text: (Privacy Act, 1985); Vriend v Alberta (1996); (Vriend v Alberta, 1996). Use the year in the citation even when the Act was substantially amended later; the reference points to the consolidation you read, and the “current to” date on the Justice Laws page is worth noting in your methods if the law changed during your study.

Australia: Acts of Parliament and High Court Cases

Australian guides adapt APA to the Australian Guide to Legal Citation: the Act’s short title and year are italicised, followed by the jurisdiction in parentheses (Cth for Commonwealth, then state abbreviations such as Qld, NSW, Vic), and a pinpoint if you cite a section.

The Federal Register of Legislation heads the Privacy Act as “Privacy Act 1988, No. 119, 1988” and publishes numbered compilations; cite the Act, not the compilation number, unless your discipline expects it. The Queensland and 1989 Mabo examples are the ones James Cook University’s APA guide uses; the 1992 Mabo [No 2] neutral citation is the High Court’s own.

In text: Section 6 of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) defines personal information…; (Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)); Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992); (Mabo v Queensland, 1989). Australian usage italicises the Act’s title in text as well as in the reference list, which differs from the US rule; follow your university’s guide if it says otherwise.

In-Text Citation Patterns at a Glance

Legal sources sit in the same alphabetical reference list as books and articles; APA 7 does not ask for a separate table of statutes or table of cases, although some UK and Australian departments do. Check the handbook. For every other source type, our complete APA citation format guide has the templates.

Where to Find the Official Text (and the Version Traps)

• United States: the United States Code on uscode.house.gov (Office of the Law Revision Counsel) and govinfo.gov (GPO); regulations on ecfr.gov; Supreme Court opinions on supremecourt.gov, with Cornell’s Legal Information Institute as a free mirror. Trap: the U.S.C. is re-published in editions and supplements; cite the enactment year of the Act, not the edition year, unless your department says otherwise.
• United Kingdom: legislation.gov.uk for Acts and statutory instruments; supremecourt.uk for Supreme Court judgments; BAILII for most other courts. Trap: legislation.gov.uk shows the Act “as enacted” and “latest available” versions on different tabs; say which one you read if a section has been amended.
• Canada: laws-lois.justice.gc.ca (Justice Laws Website) for federal statutes and regulations; the Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions site and CanLII for cases. Trap: each consolidation carries a “current to” date; the Privacy Act page we checked was current to 21 July 2026 and last amended 2 June 2025.
• Australia: legislation.gov.au (Federal Register of Legislation) for Commonwealth Acts; state registers for state Acts; the High Court’s website and AustLII for judgments. Trap: the Register publishes compilation numbers (the Privacy Act’s current compilation is C2026C00227); cite the Act, and mention the compilation only if the section you rely on was recently amended.

If your thesis is in law rather than merely citing law, start with our guide to where to find primary legal sources for a law dissertation, which explains the version traps in more depth.

Six Mistakes That Cost Marks

1. Italicising the case name in the reference list. Plain type in the list, italics in the text. Reversed is the most common single error.
2. Writing the statute like a book. “Congress. (1974). FERPA” is wrong. No author, no date in parentheses after an author, no publisher.
3. Citing a secondary summary as if it were the law. A textbook’s description of the Equality Act is cited as the textbook. Cite the Act only if you opened the Act.
4. Using a US template for a UK, Canadian or Australian source. “Equality Act, 2010 c. 15 § 6” mixes systems. Keep the national convention inside the APA list.
5. Omitting the jurisdiction on Australian Acts. Privacy Act 1988 without (Cth) is ambiguous, because several states have Acts with similar names.
6. Inconsistent short forms. If you shorten “Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act” to “FERPA” after the first citation, define it once and use it every time; do not alternate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Next Step

Open the official database for your jurisdiction, copy the citation exactly as it appears at the head of the Act or judgment, and fit it into the APA pattern above. If you would rather have the formats applied automatically while you draft, start your thesis in Tesify and add each statute and case once. For AI tools and datasets, which also have special APA rules, see how to cite AI-generated content and how to cite a dataset, software and code.