Allan:
F.Y.I.
In regards to your message on the numbering of paragraphs of decisions of
the B.C. Supreme Court, Quicklaw, the dominant Canadian legal online
system, began numbering the paragraphs of their electronic judgments 1-2
years ago. Among other benefits, this has made it easier to find references
within cited "electronic" judgments and added an element of
standardization or uniformity to the citation of these judgments. This has
helped to increase the acceptance of electronic judgments by Canadian
courts. The B.C. legal system is at the forefront in the use of technology
in and by Canadian courts, and many of the other provinces are following
its initiatives.
Jim Spence, Librarian
Weir & Foulds
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5X 1J5 Tel. (416) 947-5057 FAX (416) 365-1876
On Wed, 14 Dec 1994, Alan Sugarman wrote:
> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 1994 17:50:51 -0800
> From: Alan Sugarman <sugarman@panix.com>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <law-lib@ucdavis.edu>
> Subject: Re: Citation: Paragraphs vs. Pages
>
> One of the attendees at the TAP meeting on Dec.12, was J.C. Smith, a
> member of the law faculty of the University of British of Columbia which
> is working with the B.C. courts on electronic dissemination and citation
> issues.
>
> He reported that the Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court (I think I
> have the right name of the court) had recently required that future court
> opinions bear official paragraph numbers and recent opinions have
> contained such numbers.
>
> Professor Smith brought with him an advance sheet publihsed by Carswell,
> the largest Canadian Publisher of legal opinions which showed the
> paragraph numbers in the margin in a very unobtrusive way.
>
> Professor Smith also said that Carswell (owned by Thomson which also owns
> LCP), used paragraph numbers in all of its other law reports, although
> they only have official status for B.C. opinions.
>
> One benefit is that in the bilingual Canadian jurisdictions, opinions are
> published in French and English, and, that pagination in two versions
> would not be parallel unless it was "forced".
>
> But, the driving force in the B.C. cases was to provide an efficient
> method of official citation to be applied at the time of issuance and
> which would work well in the print and electronic environment.
>
> I note this last point. Some have suggested that the driving force is
> animus against West. That was not the case in British Columbia and is
> not, in my judgment, the reason in the United States. After all, if the
> courts would just keep the initial page number in the slip opinion as the
> official page number, this would still serve the purpose of a vendor
> neutral citation, It would not however be medium neutral. Every time I
> see a page break in the middle of a citation, an indented quotation, a
> sentence, of a hyphenated word, and the awkward compromises presented
> thereby (moving the page break to the end of the word, the citation,
> etc., designing a search engine which ignores page numbers, using an
> asterik to represent the break etc. 1 F.2d *3 4 which means that page 3
> broke in the middle of the cite "1 F.2d 4"), the thought that something
> is wrong crosses my mind.
>
> As to the point of amendments to opinions that are paginated or
> paragraphed, I see no difference in the confusion or difficulty. Page 1a
> or paragraph 1a, what is the difference?
>
> Alan Sugarman
> HyperLaw
> sugarman@panix.com
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