Posts Tagged ‘citation principles’

(internal quotation marks omitted)

Thursday, November 5th, 2015

The Bluebook Change

Hat tip to Eva Resnicow, aka Editrix Lex, who brought this Bluebook change to my attention.

Since the eighteenth edition, The Bluebook has included “(internal quotation marks omitted)” among the parenthetical expressions listed in Rule 5.2. That is The Bluebook rule addressing the broader question of how to signal any number of alterations a writer might make to a quoted passage. Similar parenthetical notices to be appended to citations as appropriate include “(emphasis added)” and “(citations omitted).” Prior to this year’s twentieth edition, The Bluebook itself provided no guidance on when a writer could or should omit internal quotation marks. It merely specified how to report their removal. However, a “Blue Tip” posted to The Bluebook site in 2010 addressed the “when to omit” question. In essence it called for the omission of internal quotation marks whenever the primary quoted material consisted entirely of an embedded quotation. “In all other cases,” the tip advised, “include all internal quotation marks.”

Although less clearly expressed, the twentieth edition has added comparable directions on when to omit internal quotation marks to The Bluebook proper. At the same time, it has removed the “(internal quotation marks omitted)” parenthetical from Rule 5.2’s roster. There is no ban on its use. The phrase has simply been deleted from 5.2, presumably, on the ground that it is unnecessary. Added to 5.2 is a new paragraph (f)(iii) which directs (as Bluebook editions reaching back as far as the fourteenth have advised) that a parenthetical identifying the source of the embedded quote be appended to the citation of the passage in which it appears. Arguably, that identification of underlying source provides adequate notice that the quotation is derivative. The revised rule is also as emphatic as the Blue Tip was before that interior quotation marks should be retained in any case where the embedded quote makes up less than the entirety of the primary quoted passage.

An Illustration of the New Rule’s Effect

A note published this past June in the Harvard Law Review contains the following passage, footnoted as shown:

Expansive though it is, the President’s enforcement discretion is not limitless. In the OLC’s analysis, legal constraints on nonenforcement derive ultimately from the Take Care Clause24 and are spelled out in a series of judicial opinions following a focal 1985 case, Heckler v. Chaney.25 The Opinion interprets this case law as standing for four general principles: (1) enforcement decisions must reflect “factors which are peculiarly within [agency] expertise”;26 (2) enforcement actions must be “consonant with … the congressional policy underlying the [governing] statutes”;27 (3) the executive cannot “‘consciously and expressly adopt[] a general policy’ that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities”;28 and (4) “nonenforcement decisions are most comfortably characterized as judicially unreviewable exercises of enforcement discretion when they are made on a case-by-case basis.”29

24. See id. at 4 (locating the President’s enforcement discretion in his constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (quoting U.S. Const. art. II, § 3) (internal quotation marks omitted)).
26. The Opinion, supra note 3, at 6 (quoting Chaney, 470 U.S. at 831) (internal quotation marks omitted).
28. Id. at 7 (alteration in original) (quoting Chaney, 470 U.S. at 833 n.4) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Had this note been prepared and published under the twentieth edition, the parentheticals appended to notes 24, 26, and 28 would be gone. Observe that the passage appearing in clause (3) includes internal quotation marks. The marks that the author omitted are those showing that the quotation from the Office of Legal Counsel opinion, to which the “Id.” refers, was itself a direct quote from the Chaney decision. The retained marks appear in the quoted Chaney passage and are attributed in it to a D.C. Circuit opinion. (Bluebook Rule 10.6.2 provides that “only one level of ‘quoting’ or ‘citing’ parentheticals is necessary.” Note 28’s failure to identify the source of the embedded quote is, therefore, in compliance. Also in compliance is the parenthical in note 28 reporting that the alteration to the embedded quote appearing in Chaney originated with the Office of Legal Counsel opinion.)

Courts Quoting Themselves Quoting Themselves

Some courts, including the nation’s highest, remove internal quotation marks under circumstances in which the new Rule 5.2 (and the prior Blue Tip) would require their retention. For example, in Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992) Justice Blackmun’s dissent cites a prior decision of the Court as follows:.

Cf. Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U. S. 95, 102 (1983) (“Past wrongs were evidence bearing on whether there is a real and immediate threat of repeated injury”) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Id. at 592.

A portion, but only a portion, of the parenthetical quote (“whether there is a real and immediate threat of repeated injury”) was drawn from a still earlier decision of the Court, O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488 (1974). Per The Bluebook, that quote within a quote should have been wrapped in single quotation marks. However, this is judicial writing, not a journal article. Judges may well consider it far less important to separate out exactly which language quoted from a past opinion of their own court was in turn recycled from a prior one. They are likely, however, The Bluebook notwithstanding, to continue to feel an obligation to note the occurrence of such reuse with an “internal quotation marks omitted” parenthetical.

Courts Quoting Themselves Quoting Other Sources

The situation is markedly different when one judicial opinion quotes a prior one that rests on constitutional or statutory language. Being absolutely clear about that dependency argues for retaining the interior quotation marks, even when The Bluebook would trim them. Justice Thomas, dissenting in a 2015 case, Elonis v. U.S., 135 S. Ct. 2001 (2015), wrote:

For instance, in Posters `N’ Things, Ltd. v. United States, 511 U.S. 513 (1994), the Court addressed a conviction for selling drug paraphernalia under a statute forbidding anyone to “‘make use of the services of the Postal Service or other interstate conveyance as part of a scheme to sell drug paraphernalia,'” id., at 516 (quoting 21 U.S.C. § 857(a)(1) (1988 ed.)).

Since Thomas’s quotation from Posters ‘N’ Things consists entirely of language drawn from the U.S. Code, The Bluebook would omit the single quotation marks and rely on the “quoting” parenthetical to inform the reader of the ultimate source.

What Should Lawyers Do in Brief or Memorandum?

Negligible space is saved by trimming single quotation marks. Indeed, space is sacrificed and the word count increased if that trimming compels the author to add a four word parenthetical phrase. That suggests, at minimum, lawyers not be influenced by the judicial practice of occasionally removing internal quotation marks from quotes that rest within longer ones, no matter the ultimate source. Absolute clarity argues for including them even when The Bluebook considers them unnecessary. In no case should there be need for an “internal quotation marks omitted” parenthetical.

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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.

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If the Judge Will Be Reading My Brief on a Screen, Where Should I Place My Citations?

Tuesday, April 8th, 2014

A. Introduction

In a prior post I explored how the transformation of case law to linked electronic data undercut Brian Garner’s longstanding argument that judges should place their citations in footnotes.  As that post promised, I’ll now turn to Garner’s position as it applies to writing that lawyers prepare for judicial readers.

Brief Page

Implicitly, Garner’s position assumes a printed page, with footnote calls embedded in the text and the related notes placed at the bottom.  In print that entirety is visible at once.  The eyes must move, but both call and footnote remain within a single field of vision.  Secondly, when the citation sits inert on a printed page and the cited source is online, the decision to inspect that source and when to do so is inevitably influenced by the significant discontinuity that transaction will entail.  In print, citation placement contributes little to that discontinuity.  The situation is altered –  significantly, it seems to me  –  when a brief or memorandum is submitted electronically and will most likely be read from a screen.  In 2014 that is the case with a great deal of litigation.

B. Electronic briefs and memoranda filed with federal courts

Except for the Supreme Court, electronic filing is available in nearly all federal courts and proceedings.  In many it is mandatory.  With some federal courts that has been true for years.  The recent advent of the iPad and follow-on tablets has allowed judges and their law clerks to place electronically filed case documents on the screen of a highly portable computer, one that is capable of accessing the full case record and the online legal research services used by the court with minimal interruption.  A internal survey conducted by Federal Judicial Center in early 2012 found that fifty-eight percent of the judges in federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts used an iPad for court work.

Inexorably that has led some judges to press for links between the citations in the documents they read from the screen and the authorities or portions of the record to which they refer.  Local rules commonly permit their inclusion.  Local Rule 25.1(i) of the Second Circuit is typical.  It provides:

(i) Hyperlinks. A document filed under this rule may contain hyperlinks to (i) other portions of the same document or to other documents filed on appeal; (ii) documents filed in the lower court or agency from which the record on appeal is generated; and (iii) statutes, rules, regulations, and opinions. A hyperlink to a cited authority does not replace standard citation format.

An ad hoc group of federal judges and judicial staff has taken the further step of affirmatively encouraging such links.

The judges of the Fifth Circuit, not content to leave the matter to attorney initiative, prevailed upon the chief of the court’s technology division, Ken Russo, to develop an application that converts citations in e-filed briefs to links.  In the case of citations to the record, the links retrieve the cited portion from the CM/ECF system.  Citations of authority are linked to the online service of the reader’s choice (which during a period of transition between “classic” and next generation systems at both Westlaw and Lexis may well be different for judges and law clerks).  Since the brief author or opposing counsel may be an attorney who uses Fastcase or Casemaker (both of which are represented in the states which comprise the Fifth Circuit) Russo’s system also contemplates those services as link options.  To facilitate the programmatic linking of references to the record, the court issued a local rule, effective December 1, 2013, prescribing a new and distinctive format for such citations.  Finally, anticipating similar link-related format changes in the future, the circuit has issued a rule 25.2.15 authorizing the clerk to “make changes to the standards for electronic filing to adapt to changes in technology.”

C. E-filing in Texas and other states

Electronic filing has progressed more slowly and unevenly in state courts.  Nonetheless, it has a presence in most states, with mandatory e-filing existing to some degree in nearly half.  Leading the pack, especially at the appellate level, is Texas.  (Appellate e-filing in other states is summarized in a recent survey conducted by Blake Hawthorne, Clerk of the Texas Supreme Court.)  On January 1, 2014, electronic filing became mandatory for cases in the Texas Supreme Court and for civil cases in the state’s intermediate courts of appeals.  Like other appellate rules, federal and state, those in Texas had already been adjusted to the modern era by the conversion of document length limits from pages to maximum word counts.  Because these are documents Texas judges read from screens of various sizes the minimum font size was, at the same time, increased from 12 point to 14.  (All justices of the Texas Supreme Court have tablets and smart phones.)  To ease the transition,  court staff prepared detailed guidance on how to prepare briefs that not only comply with the new rules but are optimized to fit judicial work patterns and preferences.  One guide includes advice on such points as how to structure a pdf document so as to facilitate the reader’s navigation through it, why and how to link to cited authority, and how to set the document’s original display in view of the writer’s uncertainty about the screen real estate it will occupy.

D. The implications for citation placement

As noted in the prior post, today’s online legal research environment has replaced the judicial opinion “page” as the unit of view with the continuously scrollable document.  Page break locations necessary for pinpoint citation are indicated, but there being no true page, footnotes are either moved to the document’s end or displayed in close proximity to their calls.  The dominance of pdf as the format for e-filed documents might encourage the impression that, by contrast, the page remains a meaningful unit in the electronic brief.  But whenever the reader may be working from a screen rather than a print copy of the file that impression is deceptive.  In varying degrees, desktop, laptop, tablet, and smart phone all place the reader in control over how a pdf file is displayed.  Depending on the device and application, readers may be able to open bookmarks allowing navigation within a document, immediately adjacent to its text.  By zooming, they can increase the perceived size of the font at the expense of the amount of text they see on the screen.  They can choose to scroll rather than page through a document.  Footnotes remain footnotes, but on the screen there is a strong probability they will not be visible at the same time as the segment of the text to which they relate.

If the electronic document has been prepared with care, its footnote calls will be linked to the notes, and if citations have been linked to the cited authorities either by the author or, as in the Fifth Circuit, by court software, the path to those authorities will not depend on the citations’ sharing the reader’s field of vision with the propositions they support.  On the other hand, the reader’s decision over whether and when to inspect a cited source now involves greater discontinuity than simple eye movement.

I will concede, as Garner stresses, that embedded citations inescapably interrupt the flow of the writer’s exposition, but use of that format is the only way, in an electronically filed brief, to assure that one’s citations are seen together with the textual material to which they relate.  To the extent that a citation operates purely as a reminder to a judicial reader that proximity is useful.  More importantly, however, if the judge or law clerk need simply touch or click the citation to view the authority or portion of the record to which it points, proximity at once informs and invites that move.  That should be a move that a brief’s author will want to facilitate.  For while judges write their decisions with authority and cite primarily to explain, lawyers write memoranda and briefs to persuade and cite to invoke the authority of others.

In sum, as more and more judges read lawyer submissions from a screen, with the near instant capability to follow citations to the case, statute, or record excerpt to which they refer, those who previously placed citations in footnotes have strong reason to reconsider.

E. Judge for yourself

The briefs filed with the Texas Supreme Court are available for inspection at a public web site.  By court mandate they are filed in pdf.  As the result of court encouragement many contain citations that can be executed by touch or click.  Court staff tell me that the shift to electronic media has led to fewer briefs with their citations in footnotes.  That pattern has not vanished, however.  As a result, the court’s site contains examples of the alternative styles that anyone can examine and compare.  I invite you to conduct the following experiment:

Download the following two briefs and work your way through them as though you were a judge.  While doing so, consider these questions, bearing in mind the extent to which your answers are affected by the device and software you are using and the preferences you have set:

  • Can one see the citation and the text it supports at the same time or does that require a scroll, click, or touch?
  • If and when one chooses to follow the linked citation to the referenced source (and back) to what degree is that move facilitated or rendered more awkward by the citation’s placement?

From a current, high profile case:

F. Deeper issues raised by citations that are links

Citation placement is by no means the only or even the most important issue raised by the conversion of citations in briefs into executable pathways leading directly to the cited text or document.  That larger topic will be the subject of a later post.

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Where Should Citations Be Placed? An Old Debate, A Radically Changed Environment

Friday, March 28th, 2014

A. A Revived Debate

A recent column by Bryan Garner in the ABA Journal reprised a theme he has advanced for years: Lawyers and judges should stow their citations in footnotes.  Placed directly within the text of an opinion or brief, Garner argues, citations interfere with the reader’s ability to follow the writer’s ideas and also with the writer’s use of some of the more important techniques of effective writing.  When Garner took his case to the pages of the Court Review in 2001, he focused the argument on judicial opinions, drawing a response from Judge Richard Posner.  Posner conceded that the suggestion “had some merit … but not enough to offset its negative features.”  Most obvious among these, he wrote, “is that they force the reader to interrupt the reading of the text with glances down to the bottom of the page. They prevent continuous reading.”  He also noted that one could tread a middle path: “[T]he author always has the option of putting some … [citations] in footnotes.”

B. How the Electronic Legal Research Environment Bears on the Question for Those Who Write Judicial Opinions

1. Online, the citations in judicial opinions are converted to links

For most of us, the citations to cases, statutes, and administrative regulations we encounter in a judicial opinion are no longer static information about the authorities on which the text rests but electronic pathways enabling immediate access to them.  Read from a screen rather than a page they invite the reader, whether on the first pass through or on a subsequent one, to move back and forth between the primary text and the sources it cites.  Nor need the exploration end with the first link out, for authorities cited by that initial reference, can themselves be inspected with a touch of the screen or click of the mouse.  Cited cases can, with equal ease, be read against subsequent decisions interpreting, distinguishing, disagreeing, or even overruling their position.  The routine conversion of judicial citations to electronic pathways out from the text and targets for citator links into opinions has a direct bearing on optimal citation placement or so it seems to me.

2. Treatment of citation footnotes by most legal research services

The majority of legal database services convert footnotes to linked endnotes.  What this means for citations placed in footnotes can be seen in Google Scholar’s rendition of Harris v. Auto Club Ins. Ass’n,  (2013).  The route to the authorities cited on a point resulting from this treatment consists of two hops, the first following a link from the footnote call to the note, the second on to the case or statutory provision.  Importantly, having been moved from the bottom of the page to the end of the opinion, the citation can no longer be viewed together with the text to which it is attached – a distinct negative.

Harris CaseThe distance between text and citation is even more troublesome when the citation is itself the target of a citator link or search.  Consider a researcher working forward from Smith v. Physicians Health Plan, Inc., 444 Mich. 743 (1994).  An up-to-date index of cases citing Smith will list and link to Harris; however, since the full cite to Smith lies in footnote 24 of Harris, the careful researcher will need to go there before backtracking to the paragraph discussing that 1994 decision.  And on Google Scholar, Bloomburg Law, Casemaker, Fastcase, and Loislaw footnote 24 has become endnote 24.

Compare the Harris example with a Posner opinion (or, for that matter, with a decisioin by the U.S. Supreme Court).  When I look at Judge Posner’s decision in a recent Social Security case, Hughes v. Astrue, 705 F.3d 276 (7th Cir. 2013) I find the proximity of the citations to the propositions they support a decided help in determining whether and when to follow the electronic paths they offer and a convenience when I make such a journey out and back.

Hughes Case

3. The conversion of footnotes to “paragraph notes” or popups

No doubt these considerations explain why neither Lexis nor Westlaw converts judicial opinion footnotes to endnotes.  Their “classic” versions place notes directly following the paragraph in which their calls appear (making them “paragraph-notes,” if you will).  And their next generation systems, LexisAdvance and Westlaw Next, put footnotes in popup windows that appear immediately adjacent to their calls when activated.

Harris Case on Lexis

If a judge could be certain that her opinion would be read from the screen and only as transformed by Lexis or Westlaw there would, I think, be a decent argument for placing judicial citations in footnotes.  But that is an alternate universe.  So long as the majority of caselaw services put greater rather than less distance between footnote calls and their notes than the printed page, inline citations seem the better choice, at least for this reader.

C. How Different Is the Situation for Lawyers Writing Briefs and Memoranda?

While Bryan Garner’s recent essay on citation footnotes draws its examples from court decisions, it takes the same position on the writing that lawyers direct at judges.  Garner writes: “whether or not you ascend to the bench someday, you’ll need to make up your own mind on this issue.”  In a subsequent post I’ll consider how the efiling of briefs and judges reading from tablets may bear that decision.

 

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Should It Be “Commissioner”, “Comm’r”, or “Commr.”?

Thursday, February 27th, 2014

1. Truncating and Abbreviating Case Names

The “case name” segment of a case citation serves a very different function from the rest.  Rarely is it used to retrieve the decision.  Although “case name” searches are possible with all online services, use of the case “cite” delivers more accurate results, particularly if the parties have common names or are frequent litigants.  (Try searching on “Smith v. Smith”, “Smith v. Wal-Mart”, or, heaven help you, “Smith v. United States”.)

So why include the parties’ names as part of a citation?  I’ve seen a variety of lame explanations (e.g., “reveals the nature of the litigation”), but am convinced that the fundamental justification rests on the brain’s greater capacity to handle names.  Imagine having to remember or to discuss cases by their retrieval IDs.  Suppose, for example, after making a point in oral argument or law school class you were to be challenged to reconcile your position with “499 U.S. 340.”  Those who litigate in federal court may need to think and argue about “Rule 11 sanctions,” but I wager that most will find it easier to refer to the Supreme Court’s 1991 decision published at 499 U.S. 340 using its name or style or title or caption and will be able to remember that name long after forgetting the case cite.

In the official report that decision appears under the heading “Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.”  In oral exchange, and perhaps in memory, that may reduce to “Feist.”  But when constructing a complete citation how should the case name be written?  On that question interests of completeness and intelligibility collide with the need to minimize a case citation’s interruption of the flow of argument it is intended to support.  As one might expect there are different answers as to how that balance should be struck.

2. Stripping Off Excess

US_title

Beginning with the heading or title the deciding court has given a case, there seems to be a fair degree of consensus around several truncation principles:

  • If multiple actions are consolidated in an appeal, drop all but the first.
  • If multiple parties are involved on either or both sides of the case, use only the first.
  • With individuals trim down to a single name, the surname unless that does not appear (“Pickering” rather than “Marvin L. Pickering”, but “Marvin P.” if the surname is not given).  This practice can stumble over Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean names when they appear in traditional sequence.
  • Shrink longer procedural phrases (in English) to a short set of Latin equivalents (“In the Matter of Buddy Lynn Whittington, Petitioner” becoming “In re Whittington”).
  • Limit designations of business organization to the first (which would lop the “Inc.” off “Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc.”).

And so on.

3. Compressing What Is Left through Abbreviation: The Bluebook (and ALWD Citation Manual)

The Bluebook takes an aggressive approach to further party name reduction.  It directs that some 144 words that may appear in a business, non-profit, or public entity’s name be abbreviated and prescribes the abbreviation to be used for each.  Actually, the number is larger than 144 since some entries are word families – that is two or more words with the same root, treated as one, “Transport” and “Transportation”, for example.  Words not on the list may, the manual says, be abbreviated so long as they contain eight letters or more and the abbreviation would save “substantial” space.  Any word on the list, however, must “always” be abbreviated “even if the word is the first in a party’s name.”  (Rule 10.2.2.)  (Prior to 2000 The Bluebook spared the first word, but the seventeenth edition ended that dispensation.)  Applying these Bluebook rules to Feist compresses the case name by nearly one-third to Feist Publ’ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co.  The ALWD Citation Manual, which achieves the same result in this and most other cases, contains an even more extensive list of abbreviations.  (Striking a very different balance, The University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation pronounces that “Abbreviations in case names are rarely used.”)

4. The Bluebook’s Limited Influence on This Point

Of the many respects in which the styles prescribed by The Bluebook and the remarkably similar ALWD Citation Manual fail to reflect the diversity of citation formats in the professional writing of lawyers and judges, this may be the most conspicuous.  Style manuals governing judicial writing in important states exhibit quite different levels of enthusiasm for case name compaction (shorter lists, a first word exemption).  Some add words.  Some specify different abbreviations for words on The Bluebook list.

While the rules of appellate practice in a small number of states (Delaware, New Mexico, North Carolina) do appear to direct that case citations in memoranda and briefs conform to the style set forth in The Bluebook, both context and the citation practices of those very courts cast doubt on whether their directives were intended to extend beyond the cite, date, and court components of a case citation to case name abbreviation.  Moreover, in several instances (Alabama, California, Idaho) where a court rule refers to Bluebook style, it also authorizes use of one or more alternative citation guides or speaks of The Bluebook as providing guidance (South Carolina).  In most U.S. jurisdictions, including the federal courts, there are no directives that can reasonably be construed as requiring the use of The Bluebook’s case name abbreviations.  An FAQ at the Supreme Court’s web site states quite explicitly: “The Supreme Court does not have a style manual for advocates before the Court.”  It goes on to suggest those seeking guidance might “search Supreme Court materials for citation to a similar document.”

5. The Supreme Court’s Approach

Anyone following that advice will quickly realize that on this point, as on so many others, the Supreme Court’s citations do not conform to The Bluebook.  To begin, the Court does not abbreviate the first word of party names.  A recent citation of an earlier Supreme Court decision identifies the case as Federal Election Comm’n v. National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U.S. 480 (1985).  Per The Bluebook both “Federal” and “National” should be abbreviated.  Indeed, the length of both “Conservative” and “Political” make them candidates for elective abbreviation.  In other respects as well the Court exhibits a gentler approach to abbreviation.  There are numerous words on The Bluebook list it does not regularly abbreviate.  The Supreme Court’s subsequent citations of “Feist” consistently render its case name, which contains three words on The Bluebook’s mandatory list (“Publications”, “Telephone”, and “Service”), as Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co.  A recent citation of Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563, 568 (1968) abbreviates neither “Township” nor “School” as The Bluebook directs.  Even more significantly, the Court’s citation includes both the name of the township and county which The Bluebook would drop.  It also employs “Cty.” rather than The Bluebook’s “Cnty.” for “County”.  Another case recently cited by the Court is Bank of America Nat. Trust and Sav. Assn. v. 203 North LaSalle Street Partnership, 526 U.S. 434 (1999).  According to The Bluebook that case name should be shrunk to Bank of Am. Nat’l Trust & Sav. Ass’n v. 203 N. Lasalle St. P’ship.  In short, there is only limited correspondence, in degree or detail, between Supreme Court’s use of abbreviations in citations to its own precedent and The Bluebook rules.  Some of the federal circuit and district courts follow the Supreme Court’s lead in this area; many do not.

6. Fifty States, Diverse Styles

A. New York Style

New York’s reporter of decisions has a published style manual.  Since the state’s Law Reporting Bureaus oversees the publication of decisions of New York’s intermediate appellate courts and some trial decisions as well that manual guides the writing of judges throughout the state and indirectly influences the citation practices of lawyers submitting memoranda and briefs to them.  While the New York manual shares The Bluebook’s enthusiasm for abbreviation, containing an even longer list, it takes a different position on one point of style on which reasonable minds (and therefore citation practices) can easily differ.  In forming abbreviations, The Bluebook favors contractions (e.g., “Eng’r” and “Int’l”, though curiously “Envtl.”). Prior to the fourth edition, the competing ALWD Citation Manual used no apostrophes; all its abbreviations ended with periods (e.g., “Engr.” and “Intl.”).  Its fourth edition authorizes use of contractions as an alternative (e.g., “Engr.” or “Eng’r”, “Intl.” or “Int’l”).  Judging from the advance publicity, the stance of the forthcoming fifth edition is likely to be at least as deferential to The Bluebook on this esthetic matter.  But New York courts are not.  With only two exceptions New York style ends abbreviations with a period.  In New York it is “Assn.” not “Ass’n”, “Commr.” not “Comm’r”, “Govt.” not “Gov’t”, “Intl.” not “Int’l”, and so on.

B. Massachusetts and Illinois

The Massachusetts style manual sides with The Bluebook on contractions.  The Illinois manual also agrees that “Association” should be reduced to “Ass’n” but like the University of Chicago manual, it calls for very little abbreviation.  Illinois style restricts case name abbreviations to “Association” and ten other words.  Even words on this short list are to be written in full if they are “the first word in the name of a party.”

C. Michigan

If New York favors periods, Michigan rejects them as altogether unnecessary.  The Michigan Uniform System of Citation includes a number of contractions (e.g., “Ass’n”, “Comm’r”, “Int’l”) but trims the concluding period off all abbreviations.  “Brothers” is “Bros”, “Construction”, “Constr”, and so on.

D. Oregon and California

Oregon’s approach to case names rests on the editorial norms of the source.  Rather than imposing a set of its own abbreviation rules, the Oregon manual incorporates those of the cited jurisdiction by providing that case names be drawn from the running heads of the case’s official reporter or failing that the regional reporter in which it appears.  During the print era this rule, which gives up on uniformity, had the advantage of simplicity.  Now that few writers rely on print reporters, with many actually lacking reasonable access to them, the rule’s explicit prohibition on using Westlaw or LEXIS (or presumably any other electronic source) “as a source for the official case name” is manifestly an anachronism.  By contrast, the California Style Manual steps into the modern era.  Its section 1:1 provides: “Follow exactly the shortened title used in the running head of a paper-based reporter or a shortened title shown in a computer-based source.” (Emphasis added.)

7. What Approach Should the Writer of a Brief or Memo Adopt?

What should an attorney to do in the face of so many different approaches?

A. Be Consistent

First: Be consistent.  California has a distinctive style manual.  A court rule calls for citations to conform to it or, alternatively, to The Bluebook.  It concludes, however: “The same style must be used consistently throughout the document.”

That is a sound principle in any jurisdiction.  In states like Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Oregon where judges follow a clear set of abbreviation norms, but lawyers are not directed to adhere to them, the prudent lawyer employs some set of abbreviation principles consistently.  Convenience to the judge may argue for employing the state’s distinctive style, while law school training, available software tools, or the citations provided by the writer’s preferred case law database may point another direction.  A failure to adhere to a single, consistent approach throughout a piece of writing is far more likely to create a negative impression of care than a lawyer’s particular choice of style.

B. Routinize the Process

Second: Avoid devoting serious time to what ought to be routine.  Some find it possible to internalize that routine.  But consistent use of a single digital source for case law should do most if not all of the job.  The major services all impose an acceptable measure of case name uniformity across courts and jurisdictions.  Some make it easier than others to copy the complete citation of a retrieved case, including their rendering of its name, but at worst the step requires a simple block and copy of a case’s title or listing.  Without marketing the fact, Lexis has long provided case names that conformed to Bluebook citation norms (e.g., Bank of Am. Nat’l Trust & Sav. Ass’n v. 203 N. Lasalle St. P’ship).  WestlawClassic conforms to National Reporter System style (e.g., Bank of America Nat. Trust and Sav. Ass’n v. 203 North LaSalle Street Partnership).

lexisadv

westlawnextWestlawNext and Lexis Advance provide ease of citation extraction as a feature, coupled with a measure of style selection.  With WestlawNext the style selected affects how the case name is abbreviated.  In both services “Standard” citation format (code name for Bluebook) is the default but not the sole option.  Presumably, The Bluebook’s registered trademark prevents their identifying its style using the name by which we all know it.

There are also a variety of software tools that offer case name abbreviation along with citation checking and reformatting, but they are a topic large enough to warrant treatment in a later post.

 

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Posted in Abbreviations, Bluebook, Cases | Comments Closed

Citing unpublished decisions

Thursday, December 5th, 2013

On December 16, 2010, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals, issued a per curiam opinion interpreting the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1) as it related to specific Florida crimes. The panel designated that opinion not for publication (“DO NOT PUBLISH”). This December opinion vacated an earlier one, dated September 8, also unpublished, that had misstated one of the defendant’s prior convictions. The new decision corrected the error. In all other respects it was identical. Although unpublished, under the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (Rule 32.1) that December 16 decision can be cited. A rule of the Eleventh Circuit (p. 147, Rule 36.2) explicitly provides that unpublished opinions are not binding precedent but “may be cited as persuasive authority.”

The issue to be considered here is how to cite such unpublished, non-precedential decisions.

Both the September and December opinions are available on the Eleventh Circuit Web site. They and other Eleventh Circuit opinions applying the same sentence enhancement provision of the ACCA can be found with a Google web search (site:www.ca11.uscourts.gov “Armed Career Criminal Act” “residual clause”) or through a search on Google Scholar limited to the Eleventh Circuit. Anyone finding the court’s decision in United States v. Hayes on the open Web would, however, be unaware that, notwithstanding, the “DO NOT PUBLISH” label the editors of Thomson Reuters selected the decision for publication in a set of books that no law library I’ve ever used has seen fit to buy or shelve, the Federal Appendix of the National Reporter System. (The Federal Appendix is for sale. The full set, currently 523 volumes, covering a mere dozen years, can be yours for only $7,093.80, just marked down from $10,134, perhaps for the holidays. However, the print market was never that publication’s aim.) Within that series the Hayes decision is reportedly located in volume 409, at page 277. That information is not available on the open Web. Furthermore, unless a person finding and wanting to cite Hayes is a subscriber to Bloomberg Law, Lexis, or Westlaw, she would not be aware that those services have designated it, 2010 BL 299236, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 25741, and 2010 WL 5122587, respectively. Those high end services also provide the case’s Federal Appendix cite, 409 Fed. Appx. 277 (or as converted by The Bluebook, 409 F. App’x 277). Persons with access to Casemaker or Fastcase could discover and retrieve the Hayes decision using a suitable query, but neither of those services adds their own proprietary citation or reports the citations added by their competitors.

One further point about the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and Eleventh Circuit additions – they provide no explicit guidance on how to cite “unpublished” but widely available decisions like Hayes. One can, however, find indirect policy guidance in the same Eleventh Circuit rule that allows their citation. It provides that “If the text of an unpublished opinion is not available on the internet, a copy of the unpublished opinion must be attached to or incorporated within the brief, petition, motion or response in which such citation is made.” Patently, this requirement is not focused on judicial access to such decisions. The judges of the Eleventh Circuit, like other federal judges, have access to both Lexis and Westlaw.  Rather the rule addresses the problem of access faced by parties without access to Westlaw, Lexis, Bloomberg Law and the rest, and citation format bears directly on access.  A citation to Hayes in a brief, memo, or court opinion reading: “United States v. Hayes, 409 F. App’x 277 (11th Cir. 2010)“ is utterly useless on the open Web. It will also fail to retrieve the decision on Casemaker and Fastcase. Yet that is precisely how The Bluebook would have the case cited once it has been selected for and received volume and page numbers in the Federal Appendix. (See Rule 10.5(a).) No doubt that is because The Bluebook is written by and for law journals, whose editors have access to at least one, if not all, of the Bloomberg Law, Lexis, and Westlaw trio. The ALWD Citation Manual similarly assumes the universal utility of a Federal Appendix citation. (See its Rule 12.14(b).)  In fact the ALWD manual goes farther down this false path than The Bluebook, for it authorizes citations to unpublished decisions that rely totally on Lexis or Westlaw cites, which are even less effective across systems, e.g., “United States v. Hayes, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 25741  (11th Cir. 2010)” or “United States v. Hayes, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 25741  (11th Cir. 2010).”

Until the federal courts begin attaching neutral citations to their own decisions, the only effective way to cite Hayes or any other “unpublished” but widely distributed decision is to include both the docket number and the full date of the decision, as in “United States v. Hayes, No. 09-12024 (11th Cir. Dec. 16, 2010).” The docket number, coupled with deciding court, enables retrieval of the opinion from all competing commercial research services, from Google Scholar and the open Web. The full date, particularly important with this example, allows anyone following the citation to realize that the vacated September 8 opinion, which the docket number will also retrieve, is not the target of the reference.

In sum, both The Bluebook and the ALWD Citation Manual have been led astray. An unpublished decision should be cited as an unpublished decision. Docket number, court, and full date work effectively to identify and retrieve a cited case across sources, including importantly the open Web. A citation to the Thomson Reuters Federal Appendix is no substitute. Nor is a citation using the proprietary numbering system of one of the commercial online services. Of course, there is no harm, beyond the space consumed, in adding a Federal Appendix, Bloomberg Law, Lexis, or Westlaw cite to that essential core. On the other hand, unless one is confident that all important readers of a document will have access to a system on which such a proprietary cite will work, the added value is not likely to be worth the increase in citation length.

Unfortunately, the judges of the Eleventh Circuit and the district courts over which it sits do not model this approach. Just as they impose no particular citation format on those appearing before them, they practice none. Hayes has been cited in numerous subsequent decisions, both published and unpublished. In United States v. Nix, 628 F. 3d 1341, 1342 (11th Cir. 2010) the earlier Hayes opinion is cited as “United States v. Hayes, 2010 WL 3489973 (September 8, 2010).” The dissent in Rozier v. United States, 701 F.3d 681, 688 n.5  (11th Cir. 2012)  cites to the Federal Appendix reporter, “United States v. Hayes, 409 Fed.Appx. 277 (11th Cir. Dec.16.2010).” United States v. Morris, No. 11-13064 (11th Cir. Aug. 15, 2012) (which appears in volume 486 of the Federal Appendix at page 853, if that is useful to you) cites the case, without either docket number or exact date, as “United States v. Hayes, 409 Fed. App’x 277, 278-79 (11th Cir. 2010).” Citations to Hayes, in recent decisions of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, appear in the form: “United States v. Hayes, 409 F. App’x 277 (11th Cir. 2010), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S. Ct. 125, 181 L. Ed. 2d 47 (2011).”

Under the influence of those appearing before them and the guidance of their clerks, federal judges need to bring their citation practice into accord with the concern over access expressed in the Eleventh Circuit rule.

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Posted in Bluebook, Cases, Neutral citations, Unpublished | 1 Comment »

Nowhere versus generic citations

Friday, November 1st, 2013

A recent New York Times piece on the prevalence of non-functioning links in Supreme Court citations (a topic for another day) carried the headline: “In Supreme Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere.” The phrase brought to mind the fierce attack mounted by the late West Publishing Company during the mid-nineties against proposals to replace that publisher’s dominant system of proprietary, print-based citation of U.S. case law with vendor- and medium-neutral citations. At the time West’s representatives repeatedly characterized citation identifiers applied by the issuing court as “citations to nowhere” or “nowhere citations.” They asserted that the approach, then and still, advocated by the American Association of Law Libraries and American Bar Association “provides absolutely no clue that helps the researcher to identify the publication, CD-ROM, or online service where she can actually find the opinion.”

Artfully, the argument conflated two quite distinct goals for a citation system – one central, the other secondary and often sacrificed to competing values. As explained in § 1-200 of Basic Legal Citation: a functional legal citation must, within limited space, “provide the reader with sufficient information to find the document or document part in the sources the reader has available (which may or may not be the same sources as those used by the writer).” A second and separate principle would call for disclosure of the writer’s actual source. In a much cited 1982 article on citation theory and practice, Paul Axel-Lute placed the latter citation principle dead last in his list of thirteen, a set which he noted carried inevitable conflicts.

As the Axel-Lute article observed this “writer disclose your source” principle is, in numerous settings, trumped by the principle of “brevity” and also overridden by rules calling for citation to “official” sources (whether or not in fact used by the writer). Noting that longstanding practice, codified in The Bluebook, which had just then appeared in its thirteenth edition, did not require specification of source in citations of court rules, Axel-Lute surmised this was because they “are found in a multiplicity of sources.” He observed that the same held for citations to the Constitution.

In the early 1980s case law was not available from a “multiplicity of sources” and a case citation in the format “___ F.2d ___, ___” at once directed readers to the cited passage and indicated the writer’s use of a specific source. Four decades later “multiplicity of sources” characterizes access to nearly all types of primary legal materials in the U.S., and such a citation cannot reasonably be understood as representing that the writer has read the decision in the pages of a particular printed volume or even in the digital replica sold online by the same publisher. Today, with few exceptions, cases and statutes are available from “a multiplicity of sources,” some free to all, others free to all members of a state bar, and still others wrapped in costly layers of added value. So long as a citation to a judicial opinion or statutory section enables a reader to retrieve the document from her preferred source there is no more need for the writer to declare his source than with a constitution provision or court rule.

In this environment of many competing sources, proprietary citations are more likely than those appended by the issuing court, legislative body, or agency to give rise to problems of access. Consider the recent decision of the Indiana Supreme Court interpreting that state’s statute on grandparent visitation rights, J.C. v. J.B., 991 N.E.2d 110 (Ind. 2013). As already noted, although the foregoing citation is derived from a specific print publication, no reader of this blog should take my use of it as representing that I relied on that source. In fact I first came upon the decision on Lexis. Prevailing citation norms do not, however, call on me to declare that. Nor does the formula “991 N.E.2d 110”, which conforms to the pattern specified by the major citation manuals and Indiana’s own rules of appellate procedure, drive the reader to a particular source. Ultimately, it will enable retrieval of the decision from all major legal research services including Casemaker, a system that is free to all Indiana Bar Association members. Unfortunately, however, since it is not the product of a system of court-applied citations, “991 N.E.2d 110” did not travel along with the opinion when it was added to all those databases. The decision was handed down on July 18, 2013. North Eastern Reporter volume and page numbers were not attached to it on Westlaw until roughly a month later.  At that point all other databases confronted the task of matching the Thomson Reuters cite and the corresponding internal pagination with their copy of the Indiana decision.  Until that is done “991 N.E.2d 110” cannot be used on them to retrieve the case nor can that citation be drawn from them by the writer of a brief or subsequent opinion.  Casemaker did not make that match until mid-October.  And as of this writing “991 N.E.2d 110” still draws a blank on Google Scholar (even though it holds the case).  Google Scholar has integrated volume and page numbers with opinions Thomson Reuters has allotted to “898 N.E.2d” but as yet none from “890 N.E.2d” or “891 N.E.2d.”

Consider also the statutory provision at issue in J.C. v. J.B. It  is cited by the court as “Ind. Code § 31-17-5-1.” On Lexis that section is presented as “Burns Ind. Code Ann. § 31-17-5-1.” Westlaw identifies the same provision as part of “West’s Annotated Indiana Code.” Both titles match those of copyrighted print compilations marketed by the respective companies. Were one to take the “writer disclose your source” principle seriously even a citation to “Burns Ind. Code Ann.” would have to indicate whether it referred to the publisher’s print or electronic version. Somewhat ambiguously The Bluebook instructs a writer to cite to “Indiana Code … if therein” rather than to either commercial version, but does it mean a specific “Indiana Code”? Although the Indiana Legislative Services Agency maintains an up-to-date compilation of the state’s statutes with that title at: http://www.in.gov/legislative/ic/2010/, it is good bet that the Indiana lawyer who complies with the state’s rules of appellate procedure and cites to Ind. Code § 31-17-5-1 has secured its text from Lexis, Westlaw, or Casemaker rather than from that public site.

During the print era it was, in many settings, important for a statutory citation to indicate the specific source relied on by the writer, but today “Ind. Code” and the equivalent in other states are generic references. They are identifiers that enable retrieval of the relied upon text from a multiplicity of sources rather than a signal that the writer has consulted a particular one.  The major citation manuals and some state rules are not clear on this point, largely because they remain stuck in patterns shaped by print.

There are still some situations where the “writer disclose your source” principle merges with the core task of facilitating the reader’s retrieval of the cited text, where indicating source avoids the risk of a “nowhere citation” or misdirection.  In the present environment, however, generic citations of cases and statutes are the norm. Traditional formats that imply reliance upon a particular source too often consume unnecessary space, impose costs and delay, and run some risk of confusion.

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Posted in Bluebook, Cases, Neutral citations, Statutes | 1 Comment »