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  I wonder, though, isn't that becoming a bit outdated?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.