To respond to several persons at once while avoiding repetition:
The word I used was "public domain," not "official." "Official" can mean
either "officially accepted" or "officially required." In any event, I was
speaking in favor of an "open" citation rule, letting lawyers cite any
reliable source they prefer. If a lawyer _wants_ to use a "public domain"
citation, a court should _let_ him or her do so; but courts shouldn't
_require_ lawyers to use any particular citation.
The context of my original comment involved someone else's suggestion that
if a "public domain" citation existed for a court's decisions, no publisher
could add enough value to sell reports of those decisions. I was pointing
out that that experiment's been tried. A number of publishers sell reports
of decisions by a court for whose decisions "public domain" citations exist:
the Supreme Court of the United States.
*************************************************
Michael A. Trittipo
Schatz, Paquin et al.
(of whom West Publishing Corporation,
an employee-owned company, is a client)
splgh@primenet.com
*************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 03/09/00 PST