Citation: Footnotes, APA and Legal Citation

In one line

Citation is how a reader gets from a statement in the dissertation to the source it rests on, and MU requires APA style with relevant footnotes provided throughout.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: citation is the systematic identification of the source of every proposition, quotation and datum in a piece of research, so that a reader may verify it; the University of Mumbai requires that relevant footnotes be provided throughout the LL.M. dissertation and interdisciplinary project and that the APA style of citation be followed, together with an adequately referenced bibliography and webliography arranged alphabetically.

What MU requires

From the Department of Law notice of 1 July 2026, among the guidelines.

Relevant footnotes must be provided throughout the work.

APA style of citation must be followed.

Adequate references must be included, with proper Bibliography and Webliography, books, articles, journals and research papers being properly cited and arranged alphabetically.

A student should notice the combination, because APA in its ordinary form uses in-text author-date references rather than footnotes, and MU requires footnotes as well. The safe reading is that the reference elements and their order follow APA, and that they are placed in footnotes. Where a Department gives a model, follow the model; where it does not, follow APA's elements consistently in footnotes and say in the dissertation which convention has been adopted.

Consistency is the thing that is actually assessed. A dissertation whose citations are in one recognisable style throughout is correct in the way that matters; one that mixes three styles is not, whichever three they are.

What must be cited

Every proposition of law: the provision, the rule, the regulation or the decision.

Every quotation, whether from a statute, a judgment or an author.

Every idea taken from somebody else, even where the words are the writer's own. This is the one students miss, and it is the commonest form of unintended plagiarism, chapter 1380.

Every datum taken from a source, including official statistics.

Every table or figure reproduced or adapted.

And every source consulted that shaped the argument, which is the difference between a reference list and a bibliography, chapter 1370.

What need not be cited. Common knowledge, and the researcher's own findings, which are attributed by being reported as the study's own.

The elements, in APA order

APA's elements for a work are: author, date, title, and source.

A book. Author, A. A. (year). Title of the work (edition). Publisher.

A chapter in an edited book. Author, A. A. (year). Title of the chapter. In B. B. Editor (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. first to last). Publisher.

A journal article. Author, A. A. (year). Title of the article. Name of the Journal, volume(issue), pages.