How to cite a statute in MLA 9

Example

This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for MLA 9. For the exact style required by your journal, paste your references into DEEPNOTIS and pick that style from the dropdown — the app covers 2,800+ variants.

What you need

For a statute, MLA 9 expects these fields at minimum:

• Short title
• Year
• Jurisdiction
• Section or article number

Common mistakes

• Abbreviating author names. MLA spells out the first author's full name.
• Using parentheses around the year — that's APA. MLA puts the year inside the container description.
• Forgetting the DOI. When a DOI exists, most styles now require it (usually as a full https://doi.org/… URL).
• Inconsistent capitalization. APA uses sentence case for titles; MLA and Chicago use title case. Mixing them is the single most common style error.