U.S., S. Ct., L.Ed.:
In recent years, courts and treatises have tended to cite U.S. Supreme Court decisions by including references to three different reporters: first, the official Government Printing Office's United States Reports (U.S.); second, West's Supreme Court Reporter (S. Ct.); and third, Michie's Lawyer's Edition (L.Ed.). I was recently working on a forthcoming edition of a treatise, and we followed that convention as well.
I wonder, though, isn't that becoming a bit outdated? In an era of the web, I think it makes more sense to just include U.S. citations where available (it takes a year or so for them to come out) and cites to the original .pdf slip opinion if it's not. You can easily find these on the web, all for free. And once the official U.S. citation is available, it seems to be what everyone uses. In light of that, I wonder if the extra citations are more trouble than they're worth.
It's probably too early to change practices: there are some folks who have the old books and want to use them, and the added costs of the extra citations is pretty low. But I would guess that over time that group will get smaller and smaller.
I wonder, though, isn't that becoming a bit outdated? In an era of the web, I think it makes more sense to just include U.S. citations where available (it takes a year or so for them to come out) and cites to the original .pdf slip opinion if it's not. You can easily find these on the web, all for free. And once the official U.S. citation is available, it seems to be what everyone uses. In light of that, I wonder if the extra citations are more trouble than they're worth.
It's probably too early to change practices: there are some folks who have the old books and want to use them, and the added costs of the extra citations is pretty low. But I would guess that over time that group will get smaller and smaller.
So to answer your specific question, parallel cites are an idea whose time has expired.
Some courts’ rules actually require citation to all three reporters. I admit that I usually disregard this however.
just curious- what do you think the court would do if you used only the U.S. cite?
appellateprosecutor,
do you think many law clerks today start with the books, or would have trouble finding the S.Ct. cite? My impression is that all of them, and many of the judges, start with Westlaw or the internet and only want a printed version if they really need to ponder a case in detail. Even then they're just as likely to print it out from their computer.
As I said, I usually disregard the rule some courts have about parallel cites, and have noticed no adverse consequences. But if I were in a court I was not familiar with, I'd surely toe the line, no matter how much of a pain it was.
As a general rule, the Bluebook tells you not to use parallel citations. But West will insert them into the case, even if the official court version doesn't include them.
Probably nothing, though I'm always concerned about the effect mentioned by Larry the Librarian. Truth is, I sometimes forget the L.Ed. cites and I've never been called out for it. But who knows what the judge is thinking and not saying?
I do include the S.Ct. cites because lots of practitioners only have access to that reporter system (like me, in previous years). That's courtesy; it'd be a lot easier if there were a uniform single citation readily available to all.
I happen to agree with that rule, but find some of the other rules idiotic. For example, I italicize all cases in my legal pleadings because I think underlining looks both stupid and vaguely anachronistic given the capabilities of modern word processors.
BTW, my personal pet peeve is __ U.S. __, which says absoluitely nothing at all other than that the case has not been assigned a page and volume number. When I see that in legal writing, I just cringe.
Personally, I cite to U.S. only (when available) in the text of the brief and put the parallels in the table of authorities as a convenience for those using those other sets and for our own future reference. (We have the L.Ed. set in the office.)
Essentially the court numbers the cases for each year and numbers the paragraphs within each opinion.
An example would be
Smith v. Jones 2007 WI 123, par.12
The meaning would the 123rd case of 2007 of the WIsconsin Supreme Court at paragraph 12.
The citation (the year, case number, and paragraph numbers) are all part of the official opinion. They just are available in any reporter, in hard copy or online.
Publishers can make the books most easy to use by simply indicating on the spine the cases covered (e.g. 2007, 1-155. For online users it ditches the page metaphor. It also allows much more precise citing.
The system has met with very limited success, largely because of entrenched opposition by the publishers. When adopted as a rule by the Supreme Court, they were able to obtain a modification of the proposed rule to allow any two cites to be used, and then eschewed the public domain cites in their volumes.
L.
TerrencePhilip has mostly covered this already, but I can tell you from my clerkship experience that federal clerks never, ever look up cases in the books any more. Why should they walk all the way down to the court's law library and spend time photocopying from a book when they can read on-screen or print out whatever they want from their unlimited-access Westlaw account? I can't see any benefit to the parallel citations at all.
But seeing as how all US supreme court cases are published, it is pointless to use the nomenclature to tell a court that the SCOTUS case you're citing is published. Sometimes one has the volume but not the page number of the opinion, though... like 549 U.S. ___, 203 S.Ct. 1234 (2010). I've cited a few cases that way (Booker, off the top of my head), just for the hell of it. Not sure why, though.
Always, not sometimes, for SCOTUS. The volume number is on the running head of the slip opinion on the day the opinion is issued.
Dave, the Bluebook actually says that practitioners can italicize *or* underline -- just not both. (A rule that I cringe to see flouted.)
In the Seventies, I began using only the official citation except for cases from state courts outside my own state, California. For foreign state opinions, I always gave the official and unofficial citations because the local appellate courts were more likely to have the unofficial West reporter than the official reporter (where, as in most instances, they are not the same). Some lower courts required attachment to the papers of copies of foreign state opinions cited in the papers.
The whole parallel citation system is cumbersome and unwieldy. For many years I subscribed to the Laweyers' Edition of the U.S. Supreme Court opinions, and my subscription included a book that contained conversion tables from U.S. to S.Ct. and L.Ed., from S.Ct. to U.S. and L.Ed. and from L.Ed. to U.S. and S.Ct. I chose the Lawyers' Edition because it took up much less shelf space than the official reports and because its volumes were of a reasonable size, unlike those of the Supreme Court Reporter, which insisted on putting all opinions from each term in no more than two volumes.
Give it another five or 10 years and parallel citations, already an anachronism, should disappear as obsolete. I'm an older lawyer, 64 now, but I got dragged into the computer age in 1994, more than 13 years ago. I had no choice as a sole practitioner if I wanted to remain capable and competitive. Lawyers are expected to have computers and Internet access these days, even if there is no formal requirement that they do so. I suspect the only older lawyers who have not been forced to adjust are those who enjoy a relatively large support structure. Soon those fossils who have not adapted will be either retired or dead.
That said, I think the extra citations are superfluous and distracting. I'm just a humble gov't attorney, but I only cite the U.S. Reports, with bobolinq's caveat.
Speaking of which, when are the powers that be going to approve moving to a simpler form of citation that includes just the paragraph number?
Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. (71 U.S.) 2 (1866)
and
Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 71 U.S. 2 (1866)
strike me as aesthetically unpleasing. But I'm not in charge.
My pet peeve, though, is "Eng. Rep." without a citation to any nominate reporter.
For now, Bluebook Shmubook. I just want to know citations the reviewing court wants. That's where local rules come in handy.
Mississippi is the avant garde here. SCOTUS and California, inter alia, are behind the times.
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