Constitution Citation Generator

Your citations

Choose the constitution and enter an article or amendment number to see your citations.

How to Use the Constitution Citation Generator

1. 1. Choose the constitution. Pick the U.S. Constitution or one of the 50 state constitutions. State names are abbreviated the way the Bluebook's table T10 has them — Cal. Const., N.Y. Const., W. Va. Const.
2. 2. Enter the provision. Choose an article or an amendment and type its number; 1 and I both work. Add the section and clause if you cite one. For a provision no longer in force, mark it repealed or amended and give the year.
3. 3. Add the copy you read, for MLA. MLA cites the version you consulted, so give its title, website, publisher, date and URL. The National Archives transcription is the copy most students use.
4. 4. Copy the citation you need. Each style shows its reference-list, in-text or footnote form with its own copy button, and the italics survive the paste into Word or Google Docs.

How Each Style Cites a Constitution

Legal citation finds a constitutional provision by its divisions, not by a page, so almost every form is built on the same short string: U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3 — Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, the Commerce Clause. Articles and amendments of the U.S. Constitution take Roman numerals; sections and clauses take Arabic numerals. The styles disagree about what goes around that string.

APA 7. The Publication Manual (§11.9) says to refer to a federal or state constitution as a whole by name, with no citation at all. A specific article or amendment gets a reference entry in legal form and an in-text citation made from it; the narrative version spells the parts out: Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, of the U.S. Constitution.

MLA 9. MLA documents the version you consulted rather than the canonical text, so the Works Cited entry is the edition or web page you read — the MLA Style Center's own example is the National Archives transcription. In your sentences the document is simply the Constitution, in roman type; the parenthesis points to the article and section.

Chicago 18 and the Bluebook. Chicago follows the Bluebook for legal sources and cites constitutions in notes, never in the bibliography. The Bluebook form separates the subdivisions with commas and italicizes nothing; it adds a date only to a repealed or amended provision, law reviews set U.S. Const. in small capitals, and rule 11 allows no short form except id.

Constitution Citation Examples

The Commerce Clause, cited from the National Archives transcription:

A repealed amendment

The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) was repealed by the Twenty-first in 1933, so its citation carries the year:

A state constitution

Article I, Section 7, of the California Constitution, its due-process and equal-protection clause:

Common Mistakes

• Dating a provision in force. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 needs no year. Only a repealed or amended provision takes one: U.S. Const. amend. XVIII (repealed 1933).
• Arabic article numbers. The U.S. Constitution is cited art. I, not art. 1 — Roman numerals for articles and amendments, Arabic for sections and clauses. State constitutions number their amendments in Arabic.
• An APA reference entry for the whole Constitution. APA asks for none; name it in your sentence.
• A bibliography entry in Chicago. A constitution belongs in a note only.
• Italicizing the Constitution in prose. In APA, MLA and Chicago text it is the Constitution, in roman type. Only a named edition's title is italic in an MLA entry.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a reference list entry for the U.S. Constitution in APA?

Not for the Constitution as a whole: APA 7 (§11.9) says to refer to it by name in your text, with no citation. When you cite a specific article or amendment, APA does give it a reference-list entry in legal form — U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3. — and an in-text citation such as (U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3).

How do you cite an amendment to the Constitution?

Use amend. and a Roman numeral: U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1 cites Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Add no date while the amendment is in force. A repealed amendment takes the year of repeal in parentheses — U.S. Const. amend. XVIII (repealed 1933) — because the Twenty-first Amendment ended Prohibition in 1933.

How do you cite the Constitution in MLA?

Cite the version you read. If you used the National Archives transcription, the Works Cited entry is The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription, with National Archives as the website, then its publisher, the date and the URL. In the parenthesis, give the shortened title and the article and section: (Constitution of the United States, art. I, sec. 8, cl. 3).

Does the Constitution go in a Chicago bibliography?

No. Chicago 18 follows the Bluebook for legal documents and cites constitutions in notes only — for example, U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Keep the bibliography for books, articles and other secondary sources.

How do you cite a state constitution?

Use the state's Bluebook abbreviation, then Const. and the provision: Cal. Const. art. I, § 7 cites Article I, Section 7, of the California Constitution. APA, Chicago and the Bluebook use the same form; APA's narrative citation spells the state out.

What do art., §, cl. and amend. stand for?

Article, section, clause and amendment. Articles are the Constitution's main divisions (Article I creates Congress); sections and clauses are numbered parts within them; amendments are the 27 changes ratified since 1791. In a citation they are abbreviated and run from the largest unit to the smallest, separated by commas.