Since August 1, 2013 briefs, memoranda, and other papers filed with New Mexico’s courts have been required to use a\u00a0system of medium-neutral case citation<\/a> for all New Mexico appellate decisions. That citation system, similar although not identical to the model recommended by the American Bar Association and American Association of Law Libraries, was first implemented\u00a0by the New Mexico Supreme Court in 1996. Pierce v. State<\/em>, released for publication on January 4th of that year, was designated “1996-NMSC-001”. The first decision of the state’s court of appeals in 1996, State v. Gutierrez<\/em>, carried the citation “1996-NMCA-001”.\u00a0Both were\u00a0issued with numbered paragraphs. Simultaneously issued citation rules required filings in New Mexico courts to cite those decisions and subsequent ones using their medium-neutral citations.<\/p>\n What is\u00a0unprecedented about the 2013 amendment to those rules\u00a0is that it\u00a0requires that New Mexico’s\u00a0print-independent citation system be used for\u00a0all pre-1996 decisions reaching back to 1852. No other state has taken this step. Shortly after Oklahoma implemented medium-neutral citation in 1997, it retrofitted all prior reported decisions. But that state’s\u00a0citation rule<\/a>, then and now, simply provides that parallel citations employing the\u00a0print-independent scheme are “strongly encouraged for opinions promulgated prior to May 1, 1997<\/span>“.<\/p>\n The New Mexico Compilation Commission began as an\u00a0agency\u00a0responsible for producing a full compilation of the state\u2019s statutes, hence its name. In 1982, however, the commission was \u00a0given additional responsibility —\u00a0publication of\u00a0the New Mexico Reports.<\/em>\u00a0In 2004 it was declared to be the state\u2019s official legal publisher. In 2011\u00a0the commission ended print publication of the New Mexico Reports<\/em>, and the state’s supreme court designated the authenticated electronic files of decisions at the Compilation Commission web site their final, official version. \u00a0And in 2012 the Commission’s database of electronic decision files, each with\u00a0a medium-neutral designation \u00a0(e.g.<\/em>, “1982-NMCA-051”) and paragraph numbering, was extended all the way\u00a0back to\u00a0Bray v. United States<\/em>, 1852-NMSC-001<\/a>.<\/p>\n Today, the Compilation Commission offers legal professionals and state offices the compiled statutes of New Mexico\u00a0in both print and electronic format.\u00a0 Combined with the state\u2019s case law, court rules, decisions of the regional federal courts, and other material, the commission\u2019s integrated DVD and online database serve state and local government offices\u00a0and compete with the commercial research services in the legal information market.\u00a0 Because of an attractive subscription price (roughly $60 a month for the general public, less for state and local government agencies),\u00a0official status, and a growing list of features (most recently a limited\u00a0citator service for its case reports) these services, known as NMONESOURCE<\/a>, do, in fact, offer serious competition.<\/p>\n The\u00a0principal drawback of the Compilation Commission’s database for legal professionals\u00a0is its tight focus\u00a0on\u00a0New Mexico. \u00a0With some frequency the state’s judges and lawyers need access to federal case law, statutes, and regulations. \u00a0On occasion, they must consult decisions from other states. \u00a0Although the Compilation Commission’s electronic library includes a collection of the most useful federal decisions and serves as a portal, linking\u00a0to Google Scholar for the case law of other states and U.S. government sites for the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, it falls short of providing\u00a0a full range of non-New Mexico primary legal material.\u00a0\u00a0At a minimum\u00a0the users of NMONESOURCE\u00a0must, from time to time,\u00a0turn to\u00a0some other research\u00a0service. \u00a0 Convenience may lead them to stay or even start out elsewhere. \u00a0The default “other service” for New Mexico’s lawyers is Fastcase, available as a membership service<\/a> to all members of the bar. \u00a0 For the state’s judges it is Westlaw, to which all of them, from the district courts \u00a0through the state\u00a0supreme court, have access under a group Westlaw subscription<\/a>.<\/p>\n Current decisions of the\u00a0appellate courts of New Mexico model the citation format the 2013 rule requires of lawyers. \u00a0While that rule does not require parallel print-based citations for state decisions dated after the cutoff for\u00a0the final volume of the New Mexico Reports<\/em>, judges continue to include parallel references to the Pacific Reporter<\/em> of the Thomson Reuters National Reporter System<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 As the rule directs, however, their pinpoint references employ the paragraph numbers of the medium-neutral format. \u00a0Review of a small sample of briefs filed in recent New Mexico appeals leaves little doubt that the system has also taken hold among lawyers.\u00a0 Student editors of the New Mexico Law Review<\/em><\/a>\u00a0employ the new citation method in their writing.<\/p>\n To comply with the 2013 citation rule, the\u00a0judge, lawyer, or law student\u00a0needs access to a database that has retrofitted its collection of New Mexico’s pre-1996 decisions\u00a0with medium-neutral case\u00a0identifiers and paragraph numbers. \u00a0A database search on “contract breach” may lead a researcher to the\u00a01959 decision of the New Mexico Supreme Court in Wolf v. Perry<\/em>\u00a0or the\u00a01993 case, Mark V, Inc. v. Mellekas<\/em>. \u00a0When first published and for years thereafter the volume and page numbers of those two\u00a0decisions\u00a0in the New Mexico Reports<\/em> and Pacific Reporter<\/em> would have provided\u00a0proper citations. \u00a0Indeed, they had none other. \u00a0But as of August 1, 2013, Wolf v. Perry<\/em> is to be cited as “1959-NMSC-044”; Mark V, Inc.<\/em>, as “1993-NMSC-001”. \u00a0While a search on Bloomberg Law, Google Scholar, or Fastcase will take you to those cases, none of those\u00a0services yet delivers their neutral citations, let alone the paragraph numbering needed to direct a reader\u00a0to a specific passage.<\/p>\n Does this\u00a0place the subscription service offered by the New Mexico Compilation Commission in a unique competitive position? \u00a0No. \u00a0The same search conducted on LexisNexis or\u00a0Westlaw reveals that those services\u00a0have followed the commission’s lead\u00a0and added neutral cites and paragraph numbers to\u00a0all pre-1996 New Mexico cases. \u00a0Other\u00a0research services serious about the New Mexico market will, no doubt,\u00a0do the same. \u00a0No license from the state is required. \u00a0Despite the copyright notices that appear throughout the Compilation Commission site, New Mexico could not and does not claim copyright in either the case citations or paragraph numbers.<\/p>\n In the meantime, researchers who wish to cite pre-1996 cases identified through use of a database that has not inserted the new\u00a0citation parameters can obtain them, case-by-case,\u00a0from open access resources offered by the Compilation Commission. \u00a0The commission’s web site holds tables that allow one to convert any pre-2013 official cite (“65 N.M. 457” or “114 N.M. 778”, say) to the new system (“1959-NMSC-004” and “1993-NMSC-001”, respectively). \u00a0The site also provides,\u00a0as a free public resource, a comprehensive case law collection reformatted in accordance with\u00a0the new standard. \u00a0From it one can draw the paragraph numbers the new rule calls for in pinpoint cites. \u00a0Furthermore, because the commission’s site is open to external search engines it is possible to bypass the lookup tables and go straight to the decision one wants to cite. \u00a0A Google search on “114 N.M. 778” or “845 P.2d 1232” limited to the commission’s site<\/a> will lead directly to\u00a0the medium-neutral version of Mark V, Inc. v. Mellekas<\/em> as well as recent cases citing that decision. \u00a0In fact, because the site is open to external search engines the initial case research need not begin elsewhere.<\/p>\n As the state’s official publisher the New Mexico Compilation Commission also publishes the New Mexico Statutes Annotated<\/em> and the New Mexico Rules Annotated<\/em>. \u00a0Both are included in electronic form as components\u00a0of its online and disc products. \u00a0They are also sold in print. \u00a0In neither have annotations to pre-1996 decisions yet been conformed to the new rule. \u00a0An annotation’s reference to a 1994 case will still cite it as \u00a0“In re Cutter<\/em>, 118 N.M. 152,\u00a0879 P.2d 784 (1994)” rather than “In re Cutter<\/em>, 1994-NMSC-086, 118 N.M. 152″. \u00a0So long as a researcher is working from the\u00a0DVD or online version the annotation’s obsolete format is not a problem for the cites are linked to copies of the opinions, which carry the now official neutral citations and paragraph numbers. \u00a0On the other hand, since programmatic conversion of the old-form citations should be fairly straightforward there is reason to expect\u00a0that it\u00a0will occur before long.<\/p>\n The annotations that appear\u00a0in Michie’s Annotated Statutes of New Mexico<\/em>, as published online by\u00a0LexisNexis, do contain cites that conform to the new rule. \u00a0Those in West’s New Mexico Statutes Annotated<\/em> and in the Fastcase annotations to the New Mexico Statutes<\/em>, as yet, do not.<\/p>\n Many decisions of the U.S. District Court for New Mexico do employ\u00a0the state’s medium-neutral citation scheme when citing its courts’ post-1996 decisions.\u00a0 Not all do, however, and there is little evidence to date that federal judges will be induced to cite older New Mexico decisions in accordance with the 2013 rule.\u00a0\u00a0When decisions from New Mexico, contemporary or older,\u00a0are cited in other states, even\u00a0states with their own systems of neutral citation<\/a>, they are, almost invariably, cited by volume and page number.<\/p>\n Oklahoma is the only other state to apply a non-proprietary medium-neutral citation scheme retrospectively to its full body of case law.\u00a0\u00a0There, nearly two decades of\u00a0“strong encouragement”<\/a>\u00a0to use\u00a0the system\u00a0in citing\u00a0older decisions has had a pervasive effect on in-state citation practice.\u00a0 In Oklahoma, like New Mexico, the policy was undergirded\u00a0by\u00a0creation of a comprehensive database of state law <\/a>open to judges, other public officials, lawyers, and members of the general public — an initiative explicitly aimed at loosening dependence on commercial systems.<\/p>\n The barriers inhibiting prospective adoption of any new citation approach are sufficiently daunting and the costs of\u00a0creating the necessary supporting database large enough\u00a0that\u00a0all other\u00a0states adopting medium-neutral schemes have been content to leave their print-era case law wrapped in print-era citations.\u00a0\u00a0Two of them,\u00a0Arkansas<\/a> and North Dakota,<\/a>\u00a0have done so\u00a0despite having created public\u00a0databases of\u00a0earlier appellate decisions. \u00a0So long as the boundary between old and new is distinct this seems a totally defensible approach. \u00a0How a Illinois judge or lawyer should\u00a0cite decisions of that state’s courts\u00a0rests very clearly on when the decisions\u00a0were filed. \u00a0Those released prior to July 1, 2011 and published in the Illinois Official Reports<\/em> must be cited by volume and page number. \u00a0Decisions filed on or after July 1, 2011 with a “public-domain citation”<\/a> must\u00a0be cited using\u00a0it.<\/p>\n What reasons\u00a0might have\u00a0led\u00a0New Mexico to take a\u00a0more radical approach to citation reform? \u00a0The first is that it could. \u00a0Without a full retrospective case law collection the publications and legal research services of the New Mexico Compilation Commission were seriously incomplete, including importantly its flagship New Mexico Statutes Annotated<\/em>. \u00a0Assuming that\u00a0construction of such a comprehensive\u00a0digital archive had to be\u00a0undertaken, the attachment of\u00a0non-print-based citations in the same format as\u00a0those that judges and lawyers had used for\u00a0post-1996 cases may have\u00a0seemed a modest add-on. \u00a0Moreover, the rule change could be seen as placing NMONESOURCE, the Compilation Commission’s subscription service, in a uniquely authoritative position. \u00a0Set up as an “enterprise unit” funded out of sales and subscription revenue\u00a0along\u00a0with\u00a0a dedicated portion of court filing fees, the commission was in need of a resource boost. \u00a0As the annual report of the New Mexico judiciary<\/a>\u00a0for fiscal year 2013 noted:<\/p>\n The challenges facing the [commission]\u00a0are the increases in publishing costs while revenue declined for the second year in a row. There is a significant loss in civil action filing fees due to the decrease in civil actions filed. There is strained subscription revenue stemming from the economy overall and the increase in self-represented litigants who elect to file civil actions and appear in court without legal counsel. Lawyers are forced to make difficult decisions to postpone subscribing to the official laws in favor of the limited, unannotated laws on the public access site.<\/p>\n However, since\u00a0that same public access site provides a complete set of New Mexico decisions as well as\u00a0look-up tables matching volume and page number cites with their medium-neutral equivalents and the leading commercial database services have rapidly incorporated the new cites, the 2013 rule change may not, in the end, have a significant effect on NMONESOURCE subscription revenue.<\/p>\n No other U.S. jurisdiction\u00a0has an agency with the broad charge and challenging duties of\u00a0New Mexico’s Compilation Commission or today has the initiative, incentive, or\u00a0resources within the judiciary to create a\u00a0database like the one\u00a0Oklahoma established years ago. \u00a0For that reason it seems\u00a0unlikely that\u00a0the path New Mexico and Oklahoma have blazed\u00a0will be followed by others anytime soon.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" New Mexico’s Unique Citation\u00a0Rule Since August 1, 2013 briefs, memoranda, and other papers filed with New Mexico’s courts have been required to use a\u00a0system of medium-neutral case citation for all New Mexico appellate decisions. That citation system, similar although not identical to the model recommended by the American Bar Association and American Association of Law […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,32,11],"tags":[13,6,14],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cases","category-copyright-2","category-neutral-citations","tag-cases-2","tag-copyright","tag-neutral-citations-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":61,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Some\u00a0Background<\/h2>\n
Consequences to Date<\/h2>\n
Compliance by Judges, Lawyers, and Law Students<\/h3>\n
Take Up by Major Law Databases<\/h3>\n
Lack of Reinforcement in\u00a0NMSA and Most Other Annotations<\/h3>\n
Effects Limited to\u00a0New Mexico<\/h3>\n
A Model for Other States?<\/h2>\n