Archive for the ‘Treatises’ Category

Citation Software

Monday, January 4th, 2016

Citations and Software – A Long and Vexed Relationship

Hat tip to the team responsible for Blueline (http://blueline.blue/), who suggested a post on the love-hate relationship between programmers and The Bluebook.

They have discovered, as others have before, how challenging it is to create software that will identify all the legal citations in a document and do something to or with them. The trail, dotted with patents and patent applications, is a long one, stretching back to the 1980s when a pair of Harvard Law School grads established a software enterprise they called Jurisoft. By 1986 Jurisoft’s offerings included CiteRite, list price $395, very likely the first successful PC program focused on the professional rather than business side of law practice. CiteRite would scan a brief for citations and generate a report enumerating all failures to conform to Bluebook format. In short order, Jurisoft was acquired by the parent company of Lexis. By 1990 the Jurisoft line included a companion program named FullAuthority, which to quote one reviewer had the “smarts” to do the following:

All you have to do with FullAuthority is tell it the name of the text file on your computer that contains the legal citations. It will zip through your document, tracking each legal citation like a bloodhound. When it has rounded them all up, it will organize them into groups. These groups may include cases (with separate categories for state and federal cases), statutes (with separate categories for state and federal statutes) and other authorities.

Together CiteRite II and FullAuthority comprised Jurisoft’s Citation Toolbox.  Their system requirements are a stark reminder of the computer environment of the early 1990’s:

IBM PC or compatible, MS-DOS 2.0 or higher, 250 kilobytes available memory, hard disk recommended

In the early 1990s both major online providers were moving toward hyperlinking some of the citations that appeared in their collections of judicial opinions, which, of course, required them (and all subsequent competitors) to have sophisticated inhouse tools for identifying and manipulating citations.

In time Word replaced WordPerfect as lawyers’ preferred word processing software and Dakota Legal Software brought out a Word add-on designed to compete with the Jurisoft programs. Lexis acquired its technology as well and folded it into the company’s Lexis for Microsoft Office. Today, that package, like the comparable Drafting Assistant from Westlaw, performs cite-checking, quote-checking, and citation linking in addition to format review and table of authorities compilation.

Both major vendors also have, included as part of their latest generation systems, a copy-with-citation feature purporting to furnish a properly formatted citation (in any one of numerous formats including the distinctive non-Bluebook variants employed in California. Michigan, and New York).  They were reviewed in an earlier post.

Citation tools operating outside and apart from Westlaw and Lexis continued to appear. Although maintenance of the CiteIt! software appears to have ended over a decade ago, the product’s features are still on display at: http://www.sidebarsoft.com/. Another product, CiteGenie, held its ground until WestlawNext’s copy-with-citation feature effectively supplanted it. And, for a time, Jureeka! offered those reading citation-filled documents on the open Web a browser add-on that would converted plain text citations into links. Now along comes Blueline.

Some Reasons for Programmers to Love The Bluebook

Whether designed to review a document for citation format compliance, to check a citator for authority undercutting cited decisions, or to compile a table of authorities, verify the accuracy of a quotation, or generate a link, citation software must first identify which of the diverse character strings found as it scans a document constitute citations and not addresses, part numbers, or radio station call letters. If citation format were uniform across the United States, if judges in federal and state courts and the lawyers submitting documents to them conformed their citations of authority to a common standard presented in a consistent format, the job would be an easy one. The Bluebook, with its claim to offer “a uniform system of citation” (a phrase its proprietors have trademarked), purports to be just that. And so it is within the universe of academic law journals. Complex though it may be, to the extent that the citations in U.S. law writing conform to The Bluebook the programmer’s job is relatively straightforward. To the chagrin of those attempting to construct citation-identifying algorithms, however, courts in the fifty U.S. states have quite diverse ideas about citation norms. Often they are focused narrowly on the legal authorities most frequently cited in cases coming before them. The Bluebook specifies that Indiana Code sections be cited in the format “Ind. Code § x-x-x-x” and those of the Idaho Code as “Idaho Code § x-x”, but when judges and lawyers in Indiana cite code provisions to one another they often cite to I.C. § x-x-x-x; just as those in Idaho cite to I.C. § x-x. Generally, the federal courts and those practicing before them take a less parochial view when citing state authorities, but they are far from consistent on some very basic points. The Bluebook has it that a provision in the Code of Federal Regulations should be cited: “x C.F.R. § xxx.xx (year)”. The U.S. Supreme Court favors “x CFR § xxx.xx” (no periods, no date) but is not followed on this point by most lower federal courts. (Those at Blueline claim their citation analysis suggests “that Republican appointed judges typically cite the U.S. Code as ‘USC’, whereas Democrat appointees prefer ‘U.S.C.'”) Approaches to compressing party names and citing treatises are all over the place.  The same holds for abbreviations of the several sets of federal procedural rules as cited in briefs and court opinions.

A citation reform movement of the last two decades has called for courts to break away from print-dependent case identifiers through the attachment of vendor and medium neutral citations to their decisions prior to release. Building on recommendations of the ABA, the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) prepared a detailed implementation manual. It carries the title AALL Universal Citation Guide and provides a modern blueprint for uniformity. No surprise, several of the states adopting the new approach have deviated substantially from it. How does The Bluebook address the resulting lack of uniformity? Its Rule 10.3.3 instructs that “the requirements of the jurisdiction’s format should be observed.”

As the folks at Blueline put it “the approved and unapproved variations in Bluebook style create a huge hurdle for coders who rely on hard and fast rules.”  Weak force though it may be, The Bluebook does offer a template for citation recognition on which programmers can begin to build. Deviations from its “uniform system” can be then treated as special cases or alternatives.

Grounds for Programmer Frustration with The Bluebook

Were all judges and lawyers to follow The Bluebook meticulously, would programmers be satisfied? Not so long as its citation rules remain stuck in print-era conventions. Volume and page number are far less precise than “2015 IL 117090, ¶ 31” which points to a single paragraph (straddling a page-break) in a uniquely identified decision of the Illinois Supreme Court. Decided this past January, the decision only later received volume number and pagination in the National Reporter System. Yet The Bluebook directs the passage in question be cited by the latter formula (unnecessary, delayed, and less exact). Page numbers can even yield ambiguous results. A Blueline communique reports that “a query intended for Peate v. McCann, 294 F.3d 879 (7th Cir. 2002) accidentally pulled McCaskill v. Sci Management Corp., 294 F.3d 879 (7th Cir. 2002) because the latter opinion was only 44 words long.”

The Bluebook‘s deference to the major online services, particularly when dealing with the increasingly large pool of “unpublished” decisions, is another problem. A single decision is known as “2015 BL 377979” on Bloomberg Law, “2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155224” on Lexis, and “2015 WL 7253819”.  Google Scholar and other public access sites have the decision but don’t know it by any of those designations. No citation parser can establish the identity of those references or match any of them to a non-proprietary version of the case. Situated as it is in the academy, a domain handsomely served by the major commercial systems, The Bluebook fails to address this problem adequately, and its deference to the commercial sector leads to a strong bias in favor of publisher-specific citations.

That same bias combined with The Bluebook‘s continuing attachment to print leads to rules for statutory and treatise citations that are not followed uniformly because in the current practice environment they simply cannot be.

How to Cite Treatises

Monday, August 24th, 2015

Introduction

The twentieth edition of The Bluebook is out in time for sale to a fresh crop of 1Ls.  This is the first of a series of posts that will explore how well that venerable guide addresses the conceptual and practical issues faced by lawyers, judges, and law students whose legal research and writing take place in a predominantly electronic environment.  Like the citation reference to which this blog is related, the focus here will be on writing and citing in professional practice and not the norms that prevail in academic journal publication.

Where Have All the Treatises Gone?

Once upon a time legal treatises were produced in print (and only in print) by a wide array of publishers.  West Publishing was one of them, but many treatises had no tie to a vendor of primary materials.  Citation practice made that possible.  The purchaser of a treatise published by West Publishing Company could use it with statutes published by the Michie Co. or law reports published by Lawyers Cooperative Publishing.  The same “interoperability” enabled such companies as Little, Brown & Company, Warren, Gorham & Lamont, and Matthew Bender & Co. to publish highly successful treatises without having any involvement in the publication of primary authority.  Law libraries could and did mix and match.

During the final decades of the twentieth century, through a series of acquisitions, Thomson Reuters, Reed Elsevier, and Wolters Kluwer gathered the works owned by those publishers into large treatise portfolios and placed them online.  While most treatises can still be purchased and sustained through updates in print form, contemporary researchers are far more likely to encounter the likes of Nimmer on Copyright or American Law of Zoning in electronic format.  In 2015 electronic format most likely means via the publisher’s online service, but not necessarily.  Treatises in ebook form have begun to appear.

The Resulting Citation Challenges

When a researcher identifies a treatise passage she wishes to cite (in memorandum, brief, or opinion), should her citation indicate in which of that treatise’s multiple versions (print, online database, or ebook) she has found it?

Here are two examples, one each drawn from the Westlaw and Lexis treatise collections.

1) From a Thomson Reuters treatise

A search on WestlawNext for the zoning treatment of “adult” businesses might well lead to the following passage, copied directly from that service together with what it terms “standard” citation:

§ 29:7. Place regulation: defining and zoning adult businesses

In the wake of Renton, regulations governing the places where adult businesses may operate have been widely adopted by governments at both the state and local levels. These regulations, which apply to a range of adult establishments, must comply with various limitations to ensure that they are constitutional “place” regulations for protected speech.

3 Am. Law. Zoning § 29:7 (5th ed.)

According to Rule 15 of The Bluebook, three items are missing from this “standard” citation provided by Westlaw: the name of the author (currently, Patricia E. Salkin), the full title (American Law of Zoning) and the date.

I see from the publisher’s web site that updates to the print version were shipped in May 2015.  The immediately previous update occurred in late 2014.  Since the Cornell library does not have the fifth edition of this work, let alone its updates, in either print or in ebook form I must rely on the online version.  It  reports “Database updated May 2015”.  If I were to cite the passage as if working from print, I would add the author whose name is provided online above the section text, expand the abbreviated title to full, and add a date, producing the following:

3 Patricia E. Salkin, American Law of Zoning § 29:7 (5th ed. 2014).

Because the print work is in looseleaf form and the updates come in the form of substitute pages, and I can see from the publisher’s site that the May update did not include new material for § 29:7 it’s not clear that I shouldn’t instead use the year of the 5th edition’s publication or that section’s most recent revision.  The online version does not furnish that information so I’ll have to stick with “2015”.  Or should it be “May 2015”?

Back to The Bluebook, despite contemporary reality it seems to assume that I’ll be working from print.  I’ll not count the ways, but note that rules 15.1 and 15.3 refer to “the title page” and 15.9(c) speaks of the print version as being “authoritative”.  Rule 15.9 warns against treating the online version of a book as interchangeable with the print.  Rule 15(c) limits citation of an ebook version to works that are only available in that form.

Well, the practical difficulty for this writer and most others is that although this treatise is available to the world in three formats, I have feasible access to but one.  Consequently, I can only cite to the Westlaw version.  Rule 15.9 suggests that in that case I should recast my citation along these lines:

3 Patricia E. Salkin, American Law of Zoning § 29:7 (5th ed.), Westlaw (database updated May 2015).

If I, instead, had only the ebook version to work from, Rule 15.9(c) instructs that I report that by means of an “ebook” parenthetical.

2) From a title owned by Reed Elsevier

A LexisAdvance search on the same zoning topic leads to a paragraph that Lexis suggests should be cited as:

2-11 Zoning and Land Use Controls § 11.03

The proposed citation contains no author, edition, or date.

Using the online table of contents to climb back to the top matter of the work, I find both “Author(s)” and “Cite As” pages.  The latter proposes that I cite this material in the following format:

Zoning and Land Use Controls, Ch. no., Title, § (LexisNexis Matthew Bender).

The former lists two authors: Patrick J. Rohan and Eric Damian Kelly.

The text I would cite shows a 2015 copyright notice and indicates by footnote that its text was the subject of a major revision by “General Editor, Eric Damian Kelly” in 2003.

I know that Dean Rohan died in 2009.  A search for Eric Damian Kelly leads me to Ball State University, where he is listed on the urban planning faculty.  Kelly’s CV describes his role with Zoning and Land Use Controls as “General Editor”.  It’s not clear exactly what that means; perhaps that the treatise is being maintained by Matthew Bender editorial staff under Professor Kelly’s general supervision.

It is from such data scraps that one must construct a citation.  As with American Law of Zoning I have no access to either the print or ebook version of this treatise, no idea what they display on their respective title pages.

Doing my best to apply The Bluebook‘s practitioner rules to this treatise section I would cite it:

2 Zoning and Land Use Controls § 11.03 (Eric Damian Kelly ed., 2015).

However, I confess to uncertainty whether this is the sort of editor role to which Rule 15.2 is addressed.  And there is, again, the question of whether the database, “Lexis” in this instance, shouldn’t be noted.

How Real Lawyers and Judges Do It

Examination of a sizable sample of recent judges’ opinions and lawyers’ briefs that cite treatises yields these conclusions:

  • No matter what The Bluebook says, print and electronic versions are treated as interchangeable.
    • Citations of treatise sections that are almost certainly based on the online version invariably fail to say so.  And there is, as yet, no trace of an acknowledged ebook citation.
  • The year of most recent revision is generally, although not consistently, provided.
    • Since briefs and opinions are focused on a specific matter and dated, a treatise citation can arguably drop the year of publication or most recent revision so long as it is referring to the most recent version of the text as of the date of writing.  That is presumably the logic of citations like: 1 Melville B.  Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 6.03.
  • Whether or not the date is given, the edition is usually indicated (e.g., “4th ed.” or “rev. ed.”).
  • Whether and, if so how, to credit subsequent authors or editors of treatises that still carry the name of a deceased author is a matter on which practice varies widely.  In truth, so long as the title adequately identifies the work – Zoning and Land Use Controls, Powell on Real Property – it is hard to understand why the current editor need be named.
  • The citation format furnished by publisher or online service for a treatise often prevails over The Bluebook when the two conflict.

 

The ALWD Guide Capitulates

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

alwd

The fifth edition of the ALWD Citation Manual was published this past month, renamed the ALWD Guide to Legal Citation and stripped of the previous subtitle “A Professional System of Citation.” That event warrants attention here. This post is the first but probably not the last commenting on this latest version of what has been an important citation reference and teaching book. (In view of the name change I’ll refer to it hereafter as the ALWD guide rather than switching back and forth between “manual” and “guide.”)

The obvious place to begin is with the work’s final capitulation to The Bluebook. The publisher’s description highlights this edition’s elimination of “stylistic differences between the ALWD Manual and the Bluebook, to help combat the perception that students who learn citation with ALWD do not know how to ‘Bluebook.’

 1. Editions 1 through 4

When first introduced in 2000, the ALWD guide offered an alternative approach on numerous issues of style. Fundamentally it set forth a “single and consistent set of rules for all forms of legal writing.” It rejected The Bluebook’s “separate and inconsistent systems” for academic writing and professional writing in the form of memoranda and briefs. Its citation rules were derived, it said, from professional consensus. Finally, reflecting the reality that in the world of law practice rules and practices specific to a jurisdiction often trump academically proclaimed “uniform” rules, it included an appendix detailing “local citation rules or preferences.” The subtitle accurately reflected this professional perspective.

The original ALWD guide didn’t allow itself to be trapped by The Bluebook’s inconsistencies. When the citation practice in some jurisdictions or courts offered a less cumbersome format than The Bluebook prescribed, the 2000 ALWD guide felt free to embrace it. ALWD members and fans of its guide were not content with securing its adoption by legal writing faculty. They sought to persuade law journals to adopt its style. They lobbied courts whose rules mandated Bluebook compliance to accept ALWD style as an alternative. In both respects they realized some success, although, no doubt, less than they had hoped for.

ALWD’s second edition (2002) maintained this independent stance. By the third (2006) the hope of winning over a critical mass of law journals had been relinquished, and consistent typeface conventions disappeared. For the first time the guide offered instruction on where and how to use large and small capital letters when “working with a journal or publisher that requires you to use this convention.” It also yielded on the typeface to be applied to statutory titles (“ordinary” rather than the “italics” called for by editions 1 and 2). The fourth edition (2010) brought further erosion. From the beginning the ALWD table of case name abbreviations had eschewed contractions. In the fourth edition for every word The Bluebook abbreviated with a contraction, the ALWD guide now offered that contraction as an alternative, coupled with the advice that if the writer chose to use contractions they should be used “consistently throughout the paper.” But on any number of other points ALWD style remained distinct.

No longer. Those few journals that call for the citations in article submissions to be formatted in ALWD style and state rules of procedure (like those in Alabama and Idaho) that specify ALWD style as a Bluebook alternative have been rendered dead letter. Why the complete surrender? Pressure from the guide’s main market segment and constituency, law students and those who teach them. The preface to the fifth edition explains (without once naming The Bluebook): “Feedback from membership surveys pointed to the staying power of certain scholarly traditions in legal citation and urged that ALWD modify its rules to acknowledge those traditions.” In the fifth edition, the publication’s ambition appears reduced to doing a better job than The Bluebook of delivering Bluebook content.

2. Positions Surrendered

What are some of the points on which ALWD has given up its distinct, reasonable and professionally grounded position?

a. Appellate court abbreviations

A simple one concerns the abbreviation for a state’s intermediate appellate court to be used when the cite itself does not identify the court. For example, the writer wishes to cite a decision of the Florida Court of Appeals, the Minnesota Court of Appeals, or the Texas Court of Appeals using its volume and page number in the National Reporter System. Per The Bluebook that is done as follows: Szarzynski v. Szarzynski, 732 N.W.2d 285 (Minn. Ct. App. 2007). Before the fifth edition the ALWD work took the sensible position that “Ct.” was unnecessary and instructed that the citation be written: Szarzynski v. Szarzynski, 732 N.W.2d 285 (Minn. App. 2007). Several considerations commend that approach not the least of which is that Minnesota courts and lawyers employ that style. Jurisdictions that have implemented print-independent or neutral citation schemes along the lines recommended by the A.B.A. and the American Association of Law Libraries use the state abbreviation and “App” to designate decisions of intermediate appeals courts. Nor do they stand alone. In their citation practice any number of courts and lawyers employ the more economic “Fla. App.”, “Minn. App.”, and “Tex. App.” Sadly, the fifth edition of ALWD has abandoned that approach. Stripping unnecessary elements or characters from citations is always desirable.

b. Treatment of the Federal Appendix reporter

Another unfortunate point of Bluebook merger is on the abbreviation to be used in citations to that ridiculous reporter of “unreported” decisions, the Federal Appendix. The publisher’s abbreviation for this series is “Fed. Appx.” and that is how past editions of ALWD had it. Knowledgeable Bluebook users know that it favors “Fed. App’x”. A citation which The Bluebook would have be written, Robinson v. Allstate Ins. Co., 508 Fed. App’x 7 (2d Cir. 2013), ALWD and the publisher formatted as Robinson v. Allstate Ins. Co., 508 Fed. Appx. 7 (2d Cir. 2013). Although this is a point of style on which the federal courts are themselves divided, a search of recent federal decisions uncovers a preference for “Fed. Appx.” of over two-to-one. Appealing the matter all the way to the top, one discovers that the Supreme Court consistently employs “Fed. Appx.” There is no justification other than conformity for the ALWD guide to yield on this point.

c. Use of contractions in case names

The Bluebook’s use of “App’x” rather than “Appx.” reflects a general attachment to contractions. They dot its list of abbreviations to be used in case names – “Ass’n” for “Association”, Comm’r for Commissioner, Dep’t for Department, Eng’r for Engineer, Fed’n for Federation, Int’l for International, and so on. As noted above, prior to the fourth edition, the ALWD guide’s abbreviations contained no apostrophes; all ended with periods (e.g., Engr. and Intl.). The fourth edition authorized use of contractions as an alternative (e.g., Engr. or Eng’r, Intl. or Int’l). This new fifth edition specifies contractions wherever The Bluebook does without an alternative. Where The Bluebook takes an inconsistent approach (“Envtl.” rather than “Envt’l”) ALWD now follows. Such slavish conformity cannot be justified in terms of uniformity of professional practice, for in this area, most especially, citation norms vary enormously.

d. Internet materials

In its coverage of materials available on the Internet ALWD’s fourth edition called for the URL to be placed in parentheses and for the citation to conclude with a date. In order of preference that date was to be either one explicitly carried by the document itself, or the date the site indicated it was most recently updated (“last updated”), or the date the writer last accessed the material (“accessed”).

To adhere to The Bluebook’s style on these points ALWD’s fifth edition had to strip the parentheses, change “last updated” to “last modified” and “accessed” to “last visited.” The citation treatment of Web materials does continue to evolve, and all these changes can find support in current professional practice. On the other hand, ALWD’s prior style choices were thoroughly defensible, and the conversion of “last updated” to “last modified” can only be explained on grounds of Bluebook conformity. The U.S. Supreme has gone both ways on the matter, and, as on so many other citation details, it follows its own style, using the phrase “as visited” to describe the date it accessed a Web-based document.

e. Et al.

Other points on which the ALWD fifth edition bows to Bluebook style include the citation of:

3. Bottom Line

The removal of the ALWD work’s prior subtitle is telling. The guide no longer provides an independent compilation or codification of professional practice. In joining the legion of “how to cite according to The Bluebook” books and study aids it reinforces the erroneous impression that U.S. legal citation style is both uniform and static. That was not true in 2000 when the ALWD guide first appeared. It is even less true today as the transformation and proliferation of legal information sources continues to accelerate. New and knotty issues of citation policy call for serious attention and fresh approaches. It is truly unfortunate that ALWD has ceded all initiative to others.

What does the start of a new year mean in legal citation?

Tuesday, January 7th, 2014

A year change prompts reflection on the roles dates play in legal citation. I use the plural “roles” because of the diversity of functions dates serve in citations.  With some sources they are largely superfluous; with others, they are critical to retrieval.

Cases

As noted in a prior post, the full date of release is a crucial part of the identifying data for any unpublished opinion. Among the decisions released this week by the Second Circuit is one that should now and into the future be cited as: Wager v. Littell, No. 13-1683-cv (2d Cir. Jan. 6, 2014).

In all U.S. jurisdictions that have adopted systems of medium neutral case citation, the year of a decision is an integral part of its cite or retrieval tag. The decision, People v. Radojcic, 2013 IL 114197, would have been designated 2014 IL 114197, had it been released by the Illinois Supreme Court during the early part of 2014 rather than on Nov. 21, 2013. On Dec. 23, 2013, the Colorado Supreme Court released its opinion in People v. Cunningham, 2013 CO 71. Had it instead been the court’s first decision of this month it would have been 2014 CO 1. (Illinois and Colorado employ different systems of designating decisions rendered within the year.)

In a majority of U.S. jurisdictions, however, the year of a precedential decision is not critical for identification or retrieval. Nonetheless, it is routinely included as one element of a complete case citation. Thus, when a 2013 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court cites an earlier decision, that decision is identified as Trainor v. Hernandez, 431 U. S. 434, 443 (1977). Why include the year? “431 U.S. 434” provides all the information one needs to retrieve that earlier decision from any database or library shelf? The reason presumably is that knowing the year of a decision may help a reader to decide whether to look at it. It provides useful but not critical information.

Finally, it may be worth noting that the year incorporated within a decision citation is not the year that the case was compiled into a print volume or that the volume was finally published but rather the year the decision was issued.

Statutes

Citations to session laws generally include the year of enactment. Indeed, the year is often part of an act’s name. If the legislation has not been named, its full date will be employed for that purpose, as, for example, “Act of Dec. 9, 2013”.

What to do when citing to a section of a jurisdiction’s codified laws is bit of a puzzle. Should a year be furnished and, if so, what year? Now that the year is 2014 has section 110 of title 17 of the United States Code become 17 U.S.C. § 110 (2014)? Is that a function of the cutoff date of the writer’s source?

The most recent print version of 17 U.S.C. § 110 published by the Government Printing Office appears in a set denominated the 2012 edition. However, since that edition extends through the term of the 112th Congress it, in fact, includes laws passed and signed into law in the early days of 2013. The volume in which 17 U.S.C. § 110 appears was printed in 2013. Other volumes of the 2012 edition have yet to appear.  Westlaw doesn’t provide an “as of” date for this or other sections of the U.S. Code but it does report that the most recent amendment of this particular section took effect on April 27, 2005. Lexis represents that its version of the U.S. Code is “Current through PL 113-57, approved 12/9/13.” The LII notes of its version “Current through Pub. L. 113-52” without providing a date. However one interprets of The Bluebook’s prescription on this point, it definitely calls for some date to be appended to 17 U.S.C. § 110, in parentheses.

The more sensible approach, at least in legal writing produced by or for courts, is that followed by the U.S. Supreme Court. So long as an opinion of the Court is referring to sections of the code currently in effect, its citations include no date element. The lower federal courts follow the same practice as do most lawyers submitting briefs to federal courts. One also finds dateless statutory citations in the appellate decisions and briefs from such prominent states as California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Only when the provision being cited has, by the time of writing, been repealed or amended or has only recently been enacted does it become important to specify the date of a compilation that contains the language being cited. The precise form this takes will necessarily be governed by the form in which that compilation presents its cutoff date, and it ought to report the compilation date not the year that compilation appeared in print or online.

Regulations

The considerations bearing on citations to regulations appear very much the same. However, professional practice is less consistent. Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and judges of lower federal courts will often include the year of compilation for a Code of Federal Regulations provision in an opinion’s first citation to it, leaving the year off all subsequent references. Arguably, for as long as annual print compilations constituted the principal source for codified regulations that approach furnished useful information. Today, with constantly updated compilations maintained not only by commercial online services but the Government Printing Office, it makes better sense for both writer and reader to understand that a citation in a brief or opinion to 37 C.F.R. § 205.22 refers to the provision in effect at the time of writing. With a section that has not changed since 2008, the addition of 2013 or, as of last week, 2014 in parentheses serves little purpose. For that reason many judges and lawyers would cite to 37 C.F.R. § 205.22 (or a state equivalent) without indicating a year, again, unless the litigation concerned an earlier version or the regulation in question has undergone recent change.

Commentary

Dates are far less precise and therefore less useful in citations to journal articles. Because publication delays are common with student-edited journals, numerous articles that failed to appear in 2013 will nonetheless carry that date.  Many destined to appear in 2014 last received attention from their author or an editor in 2013. Judicial opinions, legislative enactments, and regulations all carry specific release or effective dates.  Individual journal articles do not. Notwithstanding the imprecision and limited utility, attachment of the nominal year of publication to article citations is accepted practice.

The same holds for treatise  citations with greater reason and despite a further difficulty. Most major treatises have been acquired by an online research service and are bundled with the service’s primary law materials.  In both print and online form they are updated at least annually. In print, the updates may be integrated, the case with treatises published in a looseleaf format, or they may be issued in a separate supplement.  Online, they are integrated without any indication of what was changed or when. Under these circumstances, how should one date a section of A. Wright, A. Miller & M. K. Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure or M. Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright in a brief or opinion prepared during 2014? Should that depend on whether one accessed the material in print or online? Assuming that one is citing to the current work rather than a prior edition or version, the best practice is to cite to the year of the most recent update or revision of the source relied on. Following that practice one would in January 2014 still use the year 2013 for both those works since they were last updated during that year, a fact noted in their print and electronic versions.

The updating phenomenon bestows greater importance on the date associated with a treatise citation. Unlike journal articles these are not static works. A reference to a particular section as it existed some years ago, 2004 say, or 1994, may well, if followed into the current version of the treatise, take the reader to significantly different text . The year accompanying the citation provides a reminder of that reality even though it may be difficult verging on impossible for those working in a contemporary research environment to determine exactly how the cited section read in 1994 or 2014. Neither Lexis (Nimmer & Nimmer) nor Westlaw (Wright & Miller) archive past versions of their treatises online as they do past statutory codifications.

Cite thoughtfully in 2014!