THE HYPERLAW REPORT FEBRUARY 8, 1996
CALIFORNIA ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION SEEKS
COMMENTS ON FORMAT NEUTRAL CITATION
AN IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE CITATION IS GOAL
CALIFORNIA DOES A SLOW 180?
COMPLETE TEXT OF CALFIORNIA REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
COMMENTS DUE MARCH 15, 1996
Below is the complete text of the January, 1996, request for comments from
Edward W. Jessen, Reporter of Decisions, The California Advisory Committee on
Publications of the Official Reports, concerning the adoption of a format
neutral citation. The statement was first discussed in a San Francisco Daily
Journal article by James Evans.
The California statement declines to adopt the terms "vendor-neutral" and
"medium-neutral", and suggested the term "format-neutral", which then is
described as a citation style that "utilize[s] non-paper-based designations
that can be affixed immediately on the filing of opinion."
HyperLaw suggests that the meaningful part of this definition and the proposal
is the phrase "that can be affixed immediately on the filing of opinion" and
that the better way to describe the concept is "immediately available citation
style." Of course, any style adopted should be to the extent feasible medium-
and vendor-neutral.
California, many could argue, already has a vendor-neutral and medium-neutral
citation format. California has a public domain citation as contained in the
non-copyrighted official reports. Although in the public domain, the citation
arguably is not vendor-neutral to the extent that whoever is the official
publisher (presently Bancroft-Whitney) obtains the commerical advantage of
having the citations and pagination before anyone else. Page numbers may be
inconvenient but some would say are equally intrusive in both electronic
versions of opinions and any republished print version of the opinion (where
page breaks will fall in locations different from the official page breaks.)
Of course, paragraph numbers for the internal citation have many substantial
advantages.
California stands in a substantially different situation than states such as
Wisconsin and Louisiana which have no reporters of decisions, such as Mr.
Jessen, and no officially published single version of the final opinion.
These are one reasons why California has so many different companies providing
CD-ROMs of state court opinions -- there is available both public domain
citations and public domain final official versions of the opinions.
Because California courts have an office through which published opinions flow,
it would be fairly simple to use sequence numbers as the opinion identification
citation.
In a sense, the California courts, already ahead of many other states in
publication practices, appears to be considering the adoption of an immediately
available citation as once proposed in a 1909 article by John B. West and a
1991 proposal of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
SIDEBAR
As a sidebar, widely circulated in late 1994 and 1995 by opponents of citation
change was a letter dated October 17, 1994 from Mr. Jessen to Fred Mueller,
Reporter of Decision for the State of New York, concerning an initial AALL task
force draft in which Mr. Jessen stated"
"Policy considerations aside, incidentally, the proposal is completely
impractical as to California law and practice, and it is categorically
unworkable in the present form."
We do not know why Mr. Jessen changed his view, but, his focus on immediately
available citations may suggest that the objectives of citation reformists were
not clearly articulated at the time. Of course Mr. Jessen is from a state that
already had a public domain citation and public domain versions of its reports
and perhaps did not perceive a pressing need for change.
The Evans article, although stating that the proposal presaged a change of
position by California and referred to late 1995 proposal concerning citations
to unpublished electronic opinions, did not make reference to the 1994 letter.
OTHER REFERENCES
The John B. West article, and HyperLaw's December, 1995 comments to the ABA
Citation Issues Committee appear on HyperLaw's Web Site, www.hyperlaw.com.
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[Rekeyed from original and posted on Internet courtesy of HyperLaw, Inc.
Those reposting this statement are asked to provide appropriate credit.]
COMMENTS SOUGHT ON FORMAT-NEUTRAL CITATIONS
San Francisco -- The California Advisory Committee on Publications of the
Official Reports is seeking comments from the bench, the bar, and the public
regarding the adoption of a "format-neutral" citation style for California
published opinions.
The deadline for receipt of comments is March 15, 1996.
The comments received will aid the advisory committee in determining if a
format-neutral citation style is advantageous to the state and the public, and
in recommending adoption of a format-neutral style to the California Supreme
Court and the contracting parties to the Official Reports publication contract.
Although the advisory; committee is using the term format-neutral, the concept
has also been characterized as "vendor-neutral" and "medium-neutral."
Format-neutral citation styles utilize non-paper-based designations that can be
affixed immediately on the filing of opinion (i.e., substantially before
paper-based volume and page citations can be affixed), and opinions are also
internally designated by a non-paper-based protocol (e.g., by discreetly
numbering the paragraphs of opinions). Such a system would provide citational
information well in advance of paper-based and computer-based versions of
opinions.
Comments and suggestions on the general concept of utilizing a format-neutral
citation style in California should be directed to:
Edward W. Jessen, Reporter of Decisions
California Supreme Court
303 Second St., South Tower
San Francisco, CA 94107
FAX to (415) 396-9554
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reproduced in its entirety including source.
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