Citing and Accessing U.S. Law

The article noted in the preceding post assessed the Supreme Court Reporter’s initiative reducing the lag in attachment of official citations to the Court’s decisions, as of January 2024. The intervening months have seen significant progress. As of August 1, 2024, all the slip opinions of the October 2022 Term and before have been converted to the format in which they will appear in the U.S. Reports, complete with volume and page numbers and editorial revisions. Decisions of the 2023 Term through McIntosh v United States, 601 U.S. 330 (4/17/2024), along with scattered decisions through Garland v. Cargill, 602 U.S. 406 (6/14/2024), have also been moved to U.S. Reports format. No doubt the balance will follow through the summer.

The ritual of citing orders granting certiorari by volume and page number continues to yield citations in the format “See 598 U. S. ––– (2023)”. However, a higher proportion of current citations of opinions from immediately prior terms are now complete. Many citations to earlier decisions of the current term remain in skeletal form (“See, e.g., Fischer v. United States, 603 U. S. –––, ––– (2024) (slip op., at 2) “).

A recent decision of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals quotes a local aphorism that underscores the importance of specificity when citing either to the record or legal authority.  It is to the effect that: “Judges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs.”

Last week the Utah Supreme Court held that the state’s court of appeals had not erred when it refused to consider a laches argument on the ground that it had not been adequately briefed.  Wrote the court:

“We have repeatedly warned that [appellate courts] will not address arguments that are not adequately briefed, and that we are not a depository in which the appealing party may dump the burden of argument and research.” An adequately briefed argument contains “the contentions and reasons of the appellant with respect to the issues presented, including the grounds for reviewing any issue not preserved in the trial court, with citations to the authorities, statutes, and parts of the record relied on.””Mere bald citation to authority, devoid of any analysis, is not adequate. And we may refuse, sua sponte, to consider inadequately briefed issues.”

Johnson v. Johnson, 2014 UT 21, ¶ 20 (citations omitted).