On Tue, 1 Nov 1994, Cindy Chick wrote:
> Hey, it takes the Supreme Court 2 years to decide their decisions are
> "done". I don't want to wait that long! If that's not the hold up, is
> there anyone out there than can explain why it takes that long for the
> Supreme Court to publish their final cases? It seems to me that's very
> important to this discussion.
Sure Cindy. By the way, even though I disagree with some of the things
you say, you say it at a very civil level.
This is what I understand about the Supreme Court, and is based in part
on being a publisher of Supreme Court decisions. First, the delay is as
long as three years. The major reason for the delay is that each
Justice must have a final sign-of on his or her decisions. If one
Justice is slow, then the whole process is delayed. At least that is
what I am told. The actual typesetting is done by the Reporter's Office
of the Court, not the the GPO. The GPO is not the source of the delay,
so I am told.
The Reporter's Office has available the mark-ups of the Slip Opinions
which show all changes made in going from the preliminary print. The
major changes are inserting the names of counsel, and filling in the
infra and supras. West makes not changes in the text of Supremen Court
opinons other than the corrections made by the Reporter of the Supreme
Court [remember, the Reporter of the Supreme Court is a statutory officer
of the Court ... the Supreme Court Reporter is a West publication. The
United States Reports is the official reporter from the Reporter of the
Supreme Court and is printed by the GPO].
Given that the names of counsel are well known in
advance, I have asked the Reporter why counsel names are not included in
the Slip Opinion since they are know months before the opinion is
issued.
For those who believe in paragraph numbering of judicial opinions by the
Court as and when issued, if the Court were to adopt this approach, then
all of the infras and supras could be completed in a permanent fashion at
the time of issuance of the decision (actually, in most cases, there are
infras and supras to the slip opinion page numbers). This would mean
that one would be able to have available the permanent interior citation
immdediately, which, I believe, would be an enormous cost-savings to the
entire profession.
Another issue relates to the citation to the opinion. The first thing that
should be of interest is that at the time the opinion is issued, the
Reporter's Office knows the United States Volume number into which the
opinion will be placed. I have inquired with the Reporter's office as to
whether they would consider printing the Volume number on the first page
of the Slip Opinion.
Another important piece of information is that the Reporter's Office also
knows the sequence of the opinion at the time is is issued. It is
assigned an "R" number. I have also inquired with the Reporter's Office
as to whether the R number could be inserted at the begining of each
opinion, which would do two things: permit librarians to easily order
their copies of slip opinions and two provide a perfectly precise interim
citation. Sometimes the R number is found on the GPO BBS.
Other points. The type for the Preliminary Print of the United States
Reports (i.e., the paperback version that comes out years after the fact)
is of course set electronically and and electronic version is available.
The 1990 term opinions are all over the Internet ... unfortunately, they
have all been supserseded by the Preliminary Print version.
It would make sense to not have superseded versions
circulating on the Internet and suggested that the Preliminary Print and
final US Reports be placed on Hermes for dissemination into public channels.
The Court has an archive of electronic versions going
back to 1982, but these have not been released. [as an aside, the
Department of the Air Force also keyed in a many years of pre 1976 US
Reports ... how many, they will not tell me, and refuses to make them
available to the public. My FOIA request was refused.]
Finally, there is one other curiosity in regards to Supreme Court
decisions. When a federal court of appeals opinion is appealed to the
Supreme Court and the Court issues a decision, the Court does not provide
either the docket number or the name of the case below (the name on
appeal changes sometimes). What do they provide. The citation to West's
Federal Reporter and only that. So, the Supreme Court is saying that if
one wants to find the case below, one must use the Federal Reporter to
locate it. I am waiting to see if the Court will at least include the
Sixth Circuit's official citation. Actually, the problem is most severe
when dealing with denials of cert. ... inclusion of docket numbers of the
case below would be most useful.
The exclusive use by the Court in referring to the court
below is just one of many factors that needs to be considering when
dealing with the global question of "how many state and federal courts
have rules which require use of West citations."
Another point somewhat related is that at the TAP meeting,
the Lexis representative said that the 1988 settlement agreement
prohibited Lexis (and Michie) from using the West internal pagination in
the CD-ROM format. That is why the new Michie federal CD-ROM's do not
have internal pagination.
Alan Sugarman
HyperLaw
sugarman@panix.com
212-873-1371
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