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Cases
This is an example of a legal citation to a case. Citations are abbreviated references to legal sources, such as court reporters, statutory compilations, and law reviews. Citations generally follow this standard format:

Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
 
The difficulty with citations lies in deciphering the abbreviations of the source title. The  Bluebook  lists the abbreviations used for each court reporter, statutory compilation and law review. In the above example, U.S. stands for United States Reports, a publication of United States Supreme Court decisions.
So now you know that Brown v. Board of Education is located in volume 347, page 483 of the United States Reports

Federal Code
This is an example of a legal citation to a section of the United States Code (USC):

42 U.S.C.A. § 1981 (2018)

The USC is the text of the statutory law arranged by subject. Statutes are first broken down into titles. So for example statutes pertaining to civil rights fall within Title 49; those pertaining to labor fall under Title 26. Statutes are further broken down into chapter and section numbers.

For 42 USC 1981, the first number in the citation refers to the title of the code and the last number refers to the section number of the code.

California Code
States may or may not differ from the federal model. For example, Ohio follows the federal model but California differs slightly. Instead of title numbers, California code citations refer to title names. Also, remember that California does not have an "official" code publisher. There are two companies, West and Deering, which publish the California code. You must include the publisher in the parenthetical.

A citation to the California Unruh Civil Rights Act law looks like this:

Cal Civ. Code § 51 (Deering 2018)