Subject: Comment on proposed citation rules -- Attn: Joan Countryman Date: Tue, 04 Mar 1997 12:48:09 -0600 From: Bryan Carson To: citation@teo.uscourts.gov Dear Ms. Countryman: My name is Bryan M. Carson. I am a lawyer licensed in Ohio and Kentucky, and am also a librarian employed at Hamline University School of Law in St Paul, Minnesota. I am writing to comment on the proposed change of citation format for the Federal courts. I urge the Judicial Conference to adopt the publisher-neutral citation format proposed by the American Bar Association. The ability to use parallel citations from a variety of sources would foster competition and would help to end the monopoly of legal publishers that currently exists. Many cases are made available now on CD-ROMs or through online legal research services, including the Internet. However, lawyers cannot cite to these sources, making them useless for research. At this time, the only way that lawyers can cite to a case in the Federal court system is to either have a copy of a reporter published by West, or else have access to the reporters through Westlaw or Lexis. At this time, all but one circuit has cases available on the Internet. This is seen as a tool of democracy that enhances the public's ability to conduct legal research. However, these cases can not currently be cited in Federal court, despite the fact that they may have been posted by that very same court. This is not only a cause of great injustice, but also helps to maintain the monopoly of the West publishing company. There would be no difficulties with the Federal judiciary in making this change, since the proposed change will have all cases cited by stating the year, a designator of the court, and the sequential number of the decision. This system would be very easy for the judges to adopt, and would allow the court to easily determine when the case came out and from which court. Where reference is to specific material within the decision, the paragraph number at which that material appears will be used to pinpoint the information, will allow more specific locating of references than was previously available. The costs of adopting such a system would be negligible, and would mainly involve the publishing of notices in the Federal Register to make the practicing Bar aware of these changes. The benefits, however, would be tremendous. This is true both for the general public and for the practicing Bar. In recent years, the average price increase of the Federal case reporters published by West Publishing has been 9-10 percent per year. Being able to cite to another case reporter would allow the practitioner to buy competing products that are not uncitable, and hence useless. This would foster an atmosphere of competition, and would help to keep the prices down. This would also benefit the Federal Judiciary, since the lowering or stabilizing of prices would allow budgetary savings for the courts. I therefore urge the Judicial Conference to adopt the publisher- neutral citation format that has been proposed by the American Bar Association. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at the address below. Thank you. Bryan M. Carson, J.D., M.I.L.S. Reference/Computer Services Librarian Hamline University Law Library 1536 Hewitt Avenue St Paul, Minnesota 55104 612-641-2063 bcarson@gw.hamline.edu The preceding comments are my own and do not necessary reflect the opinions of my employer. All original content Copyright 1997 Bryan M. Carson. All rights reserved.