^1. Proposed definitions of terms:Google Scholar

Public Domain Citation Form: A form of citation that can be used by any publisher. Strictly speaking, this type of citation form need not be medium or vendor neutral. Louisiana's new citation form is public domain. (Example: State v. Lee, 93-2810, p. 3 (La. 5/23/94); 637 So. 2d 102, where 93-2810 is the docket number, La. is the court, and 5/23/94 is the date of release.)Google Scholar

Medium-Neutral Citation Form: Any citation form that may be employed in either books or electronic databases. Examples include references to pages, paragraphs, or lines (but not words or bytes, since citation to a specific range of words or bytes would require the aid of capabilities found only in electronic products).Google Scholar

Vendor-Neutral Citation Form: A citation form that eliminates reference to the publication of a specific publisher. For example, State v. Lee, 93-2810 p. 3 (La. 5/ 23/94) is vendor-neutral because the docket number makes reference to the original slip opinion of the Louisiana Supreme Court.Google Scholar

^2. The abstract system of case citation proposed in Wisconsin provides only the following elements: case name, year, court, and opinion identifier. Thus, a citation would take the form: 1996 Wis App 235.Google Scholar

^3. Developments in access to public domain information and technology have encouraged many entrepreneurs to enter the legal publishing marketplace. In fact, there are now over 175 providers of over 700 sources of American caselaw – and much of this growth has come just within the past two years. Most CD-ROM law publishers in the market today have entered the legal publishing marketplace within the last five years.Google Scholar

^4. Attorneys who make their living specializing in legal research have opposed radical citation reforms. Chris and Jill Wren, authors of Using Computers in Legal Research and James Seidl, president of the Legal Research Center, have written and spoken extensively against citation systems that would abandon the familiar volume-publication-page format. See, e.g., Christopher Wren & Jill Wren, Letting a Thousand Citation Systems Bloom, Network 2d (newsletter of the ABA Law Practice Management Section Computer and Technology Division Interest Groups), Fall 1994, p. 1; Letter from James Seidl to Hon. Janet Reno, September 20, 1994.Google Scholar

^5. The California Reporter of Decisions has stated that proposals following the Wisconsin model are “completely impractical as to California law and practice.” Letter from Edward W. Jessen to Frederick A. Muller [State Reporter for New York], October 17, 1994. Jessen's letter also indicates:Google Scholar

The proprietary citation problem is simply not significant in large states that have viable official reports with citations that are safely in the public domain (e.g. New York and California). Thus, those states most critical to the success of such a radical change in citation style will be the states least motivated to do so. There are just not enough good reasons for states with official reports and public domain citations to undertake the disruptive and radical changes in the [AALL] Task Force's draft.Google Scholar

^6. In the following 29 states, there already exist public domain citations in state reports (including pinpoint citations) that do not rely on West's National Reporter System publications. They are: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia. Further, Louisiana adopted a public domain citation system based on docket numbers and Colorado adopted a citation system based on the West initial citation and paragraph numbers.Google Scholar

^7. Association of Reporters of Judicial Decisions, Policy Statement, August 5, 1994.Google Scholar

^8. Harvard Law Review Association, The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation 3 (15th ed. 1991).Google Scholar

^9. See Byron D. Cooper, Anglo-American Legal Citation: Historical Development and Library Implications, 75 Law Libr. J. 3, 3 (1982):Google Scholar

Miles Price provided the classic definition of the purpose of legal citation: “A legal citation has only one purpose: to lead its reader to the work cited, and this without enforced recourse to any other source of information, for data which should have been given in the citation itself (quoting M. Price, A Practical Manual of Standard Legal Citations at iii (2d ed. 1958)).Google Scholar

^10. Byron D. Cooper, Anglo-American Legal Citation: Historical Development and Library Implications, 75 Law Libr. J. 3, 3 (1982) (“a legal citation should do more than merely lead the reader to the sources cited; it should also provide information useful to understanding the material to which it is appended”).Google Scholar

^11. Paul Axel-Lute, Legal Citation Form: Theory and Practice, 75 L. Libr. J. 148, 148-149(1982).Google Scholar

^12. Lynn Foster, Electronic Publication and Legal Citation Form: A Discussion and Proposal (Oct. 4, 1994) (unpublished manuscript).Google Scholar

^13. See, e.g., Byron D. Cooper, Anglo-American Legal Citation: Historical Development and Library Implications, 75 Law Libr. J. 3, 32 (1982) (“Any changes mean that a new system must be learned, but the previous system must be relearned by anyone reading older decisions, briefs, periodical articles, or monographs.”)Google Scholar

^14. An Internet URL (Universal Resource Locator) serves to direct a request to a specific location on the Internet. It is the fastest, easiest way to retrieve a specific document. A typical URL takes this form:Google Scholar

http://gnn.com/bus/ora/catalog/moswin.desc.html Google Scholar

While the citation string may seem complicated, it is the most efficient means of communicating to a reader where to locate the document anywhere on the global Internet.Google Scholar

^15. The abstract system of case citation proposed in Wisconsin provides the following elements: case name, year, court, and opinion identifier. Thus, a citation takes the form 1996 Wis App 235.Google Scholar

^16. See, e.g., Donald Dunn, Pie in the Skies, AALL Newsletter (December, 1994, p. 172.):Google Scholar

[T]he electronic citations being proposed fail miserably. There is no readily identifiable source to use in locating the case, the authoritative value of the version of the case I ultimately locate may be suspect, and my research has become more cumbersome and time consuming. This form of citation docs not facilitate access to information; it frustrates and retards it.Google Scholar

^17. See, e.g., American National Standards Institute, ANSI Z39.29-1977, American National Standard for Bibliographic References § 4.2 (1977):Google Scholar

References to works at the analytic level [i.e., individual cases] must always include bibliographic elements that describe the next higher bibliographic-level of which it forms a part (monographic or collective level) [i.e. volume of reports, CD-ROM, etc.]. (Italics added.)Google Scholar

^18. Professors Robert Berring and Kathleen Vanden Heuvel surveyed courts to find what would happen if a lawyer wanted to cite a case available only on LEXIS. They expected to find significant barriers, but courts were quite accommodating, requiring only that the citing party provide a copy of the case to all parties. Citation standards were not nearly so rigid as they had anticipated. See Berring, Robert, On Not Throwing Out the Baby, available via anonymous ftp (Internet) at ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/loftus/nocall/essay.html (to be published in a forthcoming issue of the University of California Law Review).Google Scholar

^19. “MDC argues that West's effort to claim copyright protection for page numbers is an attempt to copyright a numbering system. This argument is sophistry. MDC urges that the pagination of West's volumes is simply a succession of Arabic numbers, in serial order commencing with “l” and continuing through a book. Of course this is so, but the statement is trivial. It is beyond cavil that one cannot copyright the Arabic numbering system. 17 U.S.C. § 102. But as is seen above, this is not just a series of numbers each rising by one over its predecessor, it is the basis of the West arrangement – the key to the self-index by which West's arrangement is accessed. This is, the Court finds, what is meant by the words “taken as a whole” in the copyright definition of “compilations.” 17 U.S.C. § 101.” West Publishing Co. v. Mead Data Central, Inc., 616 F. Supp. 1571, 1579 (D. Minn. 1985), aff'd, 799 F.2d 1219 (8th Cir. 1986), cert. denied 479 U.S. 1070 (1987).Google Scholar

^20. “Factual compilations, on the other hand, may possess the requisite originality. The compilation author typically chooses which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how to arrange the collected data so that they may be used effectively by readers. These choices as to selection and arrangement, so long as they arc made independently by the compiler and entail a minimal degree of creativity, are sufficiently original that Congress may protect such compilations through the copyright laws.” Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company, Inc., 499 U.S. 540, 347, HIS. Ct. 1282, 1288 (1991).Google Scholar