Chicago 18 (Author-Date) Legislation Citation Generator

Citing a legislation (enacted statutory law or act) under the Chicago Manual of Style (Author-Date System) framework requires combining Chicago Manual of Style (author-date)'s punctuation hierarchy with the specific metadata of the source. To construct a compliant entry, researchers must collect the popular name of the Act, the public law number or statutory code title number, the code abbreviation (e.g., U.S.C.), section symbol (§) and number, and year. In the body of your paper, Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) utilizes parenthetical author-year citations with no comma between the author and year, e.g., (Author Year, page), which links directly to an entry organized in alphabetical by author family name and chronological by publication year.

When formatting a legislation in Chicago Manual of Style (author-date), pay close attention to contributor names and capitalization. Specifically, Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) enforces inverting only the first author name (Last, First) while writing subsequent co-authors in normal order (First Last) connected by the word "and", and applies headline-style Title Case for all titles, placing analytical works in quotation marks and standalone containers in italics. Chicago Author-Date places the year immediately after the author without parentheses in the reference list, and spells out first names rather than reducing them to initials. Furthermore, if your legislation does not display an individual creator, the rule is straightforward: omit personal authors and start directly with the official title of the statute or legislation.

For digital and online legislation references, Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) stipulates placing the DOI (https://doi.org/...) or stable URL at the very end of the entry, requiring an access date only when no publication date exists. Include the section symbol (§) followed by a space and the specific statutory section number so legal readers can locate the exact provision. Using the client-side Chicago Manual of Style (author-date) Legislation generator below, you can automatically parse URLs, DOIs, or ISBNs and apply these exact Citation Style Language (CSL) rules locally in your browser with zero server tracking.