Subject: Email Comments on Public Domain Citations to Judicial 
         Conference
   Date: Sat, 8 Mar 1997 12:02:24 -0800 (PST)
   From: Jeffrey Price <pric9491@uidaho.edu>
     To: citation@teo.uscourts.gov

To: 
     Chair, Judge Edward Nottingham, District Court, CO
     Judge Richard Nygaard 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Erie, PA
     Judge Paul Barbadaro, District Court, NH
     Judge James Robertson, District Court for DC
     Judge Roger Strand, District Court, Phoenix, AZ
     Judge Franklin Waters, District Court, Fayetteville, AR
     Magistrate Judge David Baker, Orlando, FL

     (1) Whether the federal courts should adopt the form of official 
     citation for court decisions recommended by the ABA resolution?

     RESPONSE:

     I believe the federal courts should adopt the citation form 
suggested by the ABA for the following reasons

     a) It is inappropriate for a private company to have total 
control over my access to public documents. This flies in the face of 
the very term "public" and the needs of a well informed citizen.

     b) I cannot afford to subscribe to a Westlaw or a Lexis data 
base to find out what a court has to say about a particular subject 
of interest to me.

     c) I believe in free enterprise; the standardization of opinions 
will allow more competition in the marketplace, a free flow of 
information, and promote a greater understanding of the judicial 
system.

     d) Its my tax dollars at work in the courts, I do not get to 
vote on the federal judge who sits in "my" court, but a company like 
West gets to freeload off my tax dollar and I get no say. This is 
simply wrong.

     (2) The costs and benefits such a decision would have on the 
     courts, the bar, and the public.

     I can't talk much about the costs to the courts, but if they are 
anything like my business, they already computerize the opinions. I 
cannot see how it can be very expensive to simply have the support 
staff who type up opinions to simply use a template to enter opinions 
into.

     Is there any federal judge out there who types his or her own 
opinions AND edits them AND THEN sends them out with nobody on staff 
having anything to do with them? If so, then perhaps that judge might 
be inconvienced by having to learn a new format. But I suggest that 
his or her inconvenience while travelling a short (6 months?) 
learning curve is a very small price to pay.

     Finally, why is it better to pinpoint a citation to a page (a la 
West) than to a specific paragraph? As a history scholar I find 
biblical citations much easier to locate than legal ones.

Thank you,

Jeffrey Lee Price
University of Idaho