{"id":1181,"date":"2011-09-01T07:51:14","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2011-09-01T15:19:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T20:19:53","slug":"universal-citation-for-state-codes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.law.cornell.edu\/voxpop\/2011\/09\/01\/universal-citation-for-state-codes\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Citation for State Codes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Source: AALL Universal Citation Guide (First Edition). <\/p><\/div>\n

In his recent post<\/a>, Fastcase CEO Ed Walters called on American states to tear down the copyright paywall for statutes. States that assert copyright over public laws limit their citizens’ access to such laws and impede a free and educated society. Convincing states (and publishers) to surrender these claims, however, is going to take some time.<\/p>\n

A parallel problem involves The Bluebook<\/a><\/em> and the courts that endorse it as a citation authority. By requiring parties to cite to an official published version of a statutory code, the courts are effectively restricting participants in the legal research market. Nowhere is this more evident than in those states where the government has delegated the publishing of the official code to a private publisher, as is the situation in more than half of the states. \u00a0Thus, even if the state itself or another company, such as Justia<\/a>, publishes the law online for free, a brief cannot cite to these versions of the code.<\/p>\n

To remedy this problem, we (and others) propose applying a system of vendor neutral (universal) citation<\/a> to all primary legal source material, starting with the state codes. Assigning a universal, uniform identifier for state codes will make them easier to find, use, and cite. While we do not expect an immediate endorsement from The Bluebook<\/em>, we hope that once these citations find their way into the stream of information, people will use them and states will take notice. We think it\u2019s time to bring disruptive technology<\/a> to bear on the legal information industry.<\/p>\n

About Universal Citation<\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n

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\n“Universal citation” refers to a non-proprietary legal citation that is applied the instant a document is created. “Universal citation” is also called a “vendor-neutral,” “media-neutral,” or “public domain” citation. Universal citation has been adopted by sixteen U.S. states in order to cite caselaw, but universal citation has not yet been applied to statutes by any state. A review of universal citation processes for caselaw is helpful in understanding how we may apply universal citation to statutes.<\/p>\n

Briefly, a case follows this process before appearing as an official reported decision:<\/p>\n

When issuing a written decision, a court first releases a draft called a slip opinion, which is often posted on the court\u2019s Website. Private publishers then republish the slip opinion in various legal databases. A party can cite the slip opinion using a variety of citation formats, depending on the database.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, the court transmits the slip opinion to the jurisdiction’s Reporter of Decisions, who may be a member of the judicial system or a private company. The Reporter edits the opinions, and then collects and reprints them in a bound volume with a citation. To cite a particular page within a case, which is also referred to as pinpoint citation<\/a>, a party cites the case name, the publication, the volume, and the specific page number that contains the cited content.<\/p>\n

Before the advent of electronic publishing, these books were the primary source for legal research. And, while publishers still print cases in book format, the majority of users read the cases in digital form. However, opinions in online database lack physical pages. To address this, online publishers insert page numbers into the digital version of an opinion to correspond to page breaks in the print version. Thus, the pinpoint citation (or star pagination<\/a>) for an opinion, whether in print or online, is the same.<\/p>\n

Under most court rules, and Bluebook<\/em> guidance, once the official opinion is published, the Reporter citation must be used (see Bluebook<\/em> Rule 10.3.1).<\/p>\n

The decisions are published by a private company, usually Thomson West, and anyone wanting to read them must license the material from the company. Thus, if you want to cite to judicial law, you must pay to access the Reporter\u2019s opinions. (Public law libraries offer books and database access, but readers must visit the physical library to use their resources. Google Scholar<\/a> also provides free access to official cases online, but they must pay to obtain and license the opinions. In other words, Google, not the end user, is paying for the access.)<\/p>\n

Universal citation bypasses the private publisher, and allows courts to create official opinions immediately. Under this system, judges assign a citation to the case when they release it. They insert paragraph numbers into the body of the opinion to allow pinpoint citation. This way, the case is instantly citeable. There is no intermediary lag time between slip and official opinion where different publishers cite the case differently, and there is no need to license proprietary databases in order to read and cite the work. In the jurisdictions that have adopted this system, the court\u2019s opinion is the final, official version. Private publishers may republish and add their own parallel citations, but in most jurisdictions the court does not require citation to private publishers’ versions. (However, Louisiana and Montana require parallel citation to the regional reporter.)<\/p>\n

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL)<\/a> developed the initial standards for vendor neutral citation formats. AALL published the Universal Citation Guide<\/a><\/em> in 1999, and released an updated edition<\/a> in 2004. The Bluebook<\/em> adopted a similar scheme in Rule 10.3.3 – Public Domain Format. Under this format, a universal citation should include the following:<\/p>\n