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Re-evaluating Legal Citation in a Digital Landscape

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2017

Melissa Castan  and
Kate Galloway
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Abstract

Increasing access to digital works and the proliferation of digital genres has changed the way in which we conceive of information, and particularly legal information, including how it is represented within legal citation practice. This article, written by Melissa Castan and Kate Galloway, contributes to the discourse around legal citation in two ways. It first provides a theoretical justification for citation practice as an element of legal information management crucial to effective scholarship, including knowledge creation and dissemination. Secondly, and based on this theoretical foundation, it identifies the challenges facing existing legal citation practice in the face of new media, new representations of legal scholarship, and new objectives for citation practice. Finally, in this article we distil foundation principles for citation to integrate these diverse elements. To illustrate the application of these principles, the article closes with suggested citation practices designed to enhance the existing framework in this digital landscape.

Keywords

legal researchdigital scholarshiplegal citation
Type
International Perspectives
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 190 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 Stewart, Bonnie, ‘In Abundance: Networked Participatory Practices as Scholarship’ (2015) 16 (3) International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning CrossRefGoogle Scholar <http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2158/3343>.

2 Veletsianos, George and Kimmons, Royce, ‘Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent Techno-cultural Pressures Toward Open and Digital Scholarship in Online Networks’ (2012) 58 Computers and Education 766, 767CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pearce, Nick, Digital Scholarship Audit Report (The Open University, 2010)Google Scholar. See also, Melbourne University Digital Scholarship Project <http://library.unimelb.edu.au/digitalscholarship>.

3 ‘Format’ here refers to digital representation stored in a file that can be opened by a computer program. File formats are standardized means of organizing the data within a file, and are recognizable by particular software programs eg html used in web pages, image formats (jpeg, gif, png), PDF, Word, Excel, and so on.

4 See eg Publish Green, ‘Why Can't I use a PDF? – The Differences Between eBooks and Books Designed for Print’ <https://www.publishgreen.com/differences-between-ebooks-and-print-books>.

5 See, eg, Balleste, Roy and Kaufman, Billy Jo, ‘The Future of Law Libraries: Technology in the Age of Information’ in Balleste, Roy, Smith-Butler, Lisa and Luna-Lamas, Sonia (eds) Law Librarianship in the Twenty-First Century (The Scarecrow Press, 2014) 235 Google Scholar; Sinder, Janet, ‘The Effects of Demand-Driven Acquisitions on Law Library Collection Development’ (2016) 108 (2) Law Library Journal, 155 Google Scholar. The uptake of e-books, particularly in private law libraries, has encountered challenges: Bes Reynolds, ‘The Challenges of E-Books in Law Firm Libraries’ American Association of Law Libraries and International Legal Technology Association White Paper: The New Librarian (October 2012); Walters, William H, ‘E-Books in Academic Libraries: Challenges for Acquisition and Collection Management’ (2013) 12 (2) Libraries and the Academy 187 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See, eg, Keith Lee, ‘Should Lawyers Blog?’ Above the Law (25 February 2016) <http://abovethelaw.com/2016/02/should-lawyers-blog/>; Galloway, Kate, Greaves, Kristoffer and Castan, Melissa, ‘Gatecrashing the Research Paradigm: Effective Integration of Online Technologies in Maximising Research Impact and Engagement in Legal Education’ (2013) Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association 115 Google Scholar

7 Chan, Leslie, ‘Supporting and Enhancing Scholarship in the Digital Age: The Role of Open Access Institutional Repository’ (2004) 29 (3) Canadian Journal of Communication CrossRefGoogle Scholar doi:https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.2004v29n3a1455. For a list of institutional academic repositories in Australia, see Australasian Open Access Respositories <https://aoasg.org.au/open-access-repositories-at-australian-institutions/>.

8 Carroll, Michael W, ‘The Movement for Open Access Law – Symposium’ (2006) 10 (4) Lewis & Clark Law Review 741 Google Scholar; Willinsky, John, The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (MIT Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

9 ORCID https://orcid.org/

10 Figshare https://figshare.com/

11 Researchgate https://www.researchgate.net/

12 SSRN https://www.ssrn.com/en/

13 ResearcherID http://www.researcherid.com/Home.action

14 SocArXiv https://socopen.org/

15 Figshare, https://figshare.com/

16 Stevan Harnad, ‘Crowd-Sourced Peer Review: Substitute or Supplement for the Current Outdated System?’ (LSE Impact Blog, 21 August 2014) <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/21/crowd-sourced-peer-review-substitute-or-supplement/>; Correia, Ana Maria Ramalho and Teixeira, José Carlos, ‘Reforming Scholarly Publishing and Knowledge Communication: From the Advent of the Scholarly Journal to the Challenges of Open Access’ (2005) 29 (4) Online Information Review 349 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 AGLC (Melbourne University Law Review Association and Melbourne Journal of International Law, 3rd ed, 2010).

18 For an overview of trends in digital legal scholarship, see, eg, Strutin, Ken, ‘Law Periodical Publishing Practices and Trends’ Law and Technology Resources for Legal Professionals (26 October 2011)Google Scholar <https://www.llrx.com/2011/10/law-periodical-publishing-practices-and-trends/>.

19 See discussion in Harvey, David, Collisions in the Digital Paradigm: Law and Rule Making in the Internet Age (Bloomsbury 2017)Google Scholar.

20 See eg., Milsom, SFC, Historical Foundations of the Common Law (Butterworths 1969), 33–7Google Scholar.

21 Phillips, O Hood, A First Book of English Law (4th ed, Sweet & Maxwell 1960), 151–5Google Scholar.

22 Ibid 164. See also Michael Bryan, ‘The Modern History of Law Reporting’ (2012) 11 University of Melbourne Collections 32; Cooper, Byron D, ‘Anglo-American Legal Citation: Historical Development and Library Implications’ (1982) 75 Law Library Journal 3 Google Scholar. For a history of New South Wales reporting, see ‘History of Law Reporting in NSW’ New South Wales Law Reports <http://nswlr.com.au/nsw-law-reports-overview/history/>.

23 Faustus, Dietrich, Nielson, Ingrid and Smyth, Russel, ‘A Century of Citation Practice in the Supreme Court of Victoria’ (2007) 31 Melbourne University Law Review 733, 734Google Scholar; Grant T Riethmuller, ‘Improving the Use of Court Decisions in the Federal Circuit Court’ Paper presented at the Law via the Internet 2015 Conference, Sydney, 9–11 November 2015. See also discussion in Gava, John, ‘Law Reviews: Good for Judges, Bad for Law Schools?’ (2002) 26 (3) Melbourne University Law Review 560 Google Scholar.

24 See discussion in Faustus, Nielson and Smyth, ibid 734–5.

25 Nielson, Ingrid and Smyth, Russel, ‘One Hundred Years of Citation of Authority in the Supreme Court of New South Wales’ (2008) 31(1) UNSW Law Review 189, 189Google Scholar.

26 ibid 99.

27 ibid 99–100.

28 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England (1765–1769).

29 Borgman, Christine L, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (MIT Press 2007), 42–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Holdsworth, William Searle, Essays in Law and History (Clarendon Press 1946), 284 Google Scholar.

31 See discussion in Riethmuller, above n 23; Geoff Lindsay, ‘The Future of Authorised Law Reporting in Australia’ Paper presented at The Australian Law Librarians Association Lunch Time Meeting, 11 June 2013.

32 The Commonwealth Law Reports for example, continue to be printed as well as available via proprietary databases.

33 Unreported cases, for example, tend to be found online either in proprietary or open databases, including those provided by the courts themselves.

34 Posner, Richard A, ‘An Economic Analysis of the Use of Citations in the Law’ (2000) 2(2) American Law and Economics Review 381, 382CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See, eg, Salmon, Susie, ‘Shedding the Uniform: Beyond a “Uniform System of Citation” to a More Efficient Fit’ (2016) 99 Marquette Law Review 763 Google Scholar; Cooper, above n 22.

36 Price, Miles O, A Practical Manual of Standard Legal Citations (Oceana Publications, 2nd edn, 1958)Google Scholar, iii.

37 See, eg, Tranter, Kieran, ‘Citation Practices of the Australian Law Reform Commission in Final Reports 1992–2012’ (2015) 38(1) University of New South Wales Law Journal 323 Google Scholar.

38 Pursuant to what Posner calls the ‘antiplagiarism norm’, above (n 34) 384.

39 AGLC, rule 1.1.

40 Salmon, above (n 35), 769–72.

41 See, eg, Posner, above (n 34), 384.

42 AGLC, rule 1.2. See also Posner, above (n 15), 385.

43 AGLC, rule 1.1.1. This latter habit has, however, been described in the US context as ‘a Frankenstein monster, rambling uncontrolled at the bottom of the page to serve “devious purposes”.’ Austin, See Arthur D, ‘Footnotes as Product Differentiation’ (1987) 40 Vanderbilt Law Review 1131 Google Scholar, 1133 (citations omitted).

44 Posner, above n 15, 386. See also eg Gava, John, ‘Law Reviews: Good for Judges, Bad for Law Schools?’ (2002) 26 (3) Melbourne University Law Review 560 Google Scholar.

45 See, eg, Molly M King et al, ‘Men Set Their Own Cites High: Gender and Self-citation Across Fields and Over Time’ arXiv:1607.00376 [physics.soc.ph].

46 Chris Marsden, ‘Open Access to Law: How Soon?’ The IT Law Community (13 February 2015) <http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ed41009>; Fitzgerald, Anne et al. , ‘Open Access to Judgments: Creative Commons Licences and the Australian Courts’ (2012) 19(1) Murdoch University Law Review 1 Google Scholar.

47 Where ‘analogue’ is used to distinguish contemporary digital contexts.

48 See discussion in Geoff Lindsay, ‘The Future of Authorised Law Reporting in Australia’ Paper presented at The Australian Law Librarians Association Lunch Time Meeting, 11 June 2013; Fitzgerald, Anne et al. , ‘Open Access to Judgments: Creative Commons Licences and the Australian Courts’ (2012) 19(1) Murdoch University Law Review 1 Google Scholar.

49 See eg rules concerning newspapers (AGLC, rule 6.5), and rules as to pinpoint references.

50 As academic teachers and as and editors we recognize that another difficulty with standard guides, such as the AGLC, is that students and teachers utilise them in an overly prescriptive manner. Where there is a choice between being clear or being compliant, they demand compliance. The result when referencing novel forms of legal information can be awkward, ambiguous or misleading.

51 Meadows, AJ, Understanding Information (KG Saur 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 AGLC, Rule 2.3.1.

53 See eg Meadows, AJ, Communicating Research (Academic Press 1998)Google Scholar; Borgman, Christine L, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (MIT Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Hutchinson, Terry, ‘The Doctrinal Method: Incorporating Interdisciplinary Methods in Reforming the Law’ (2015) 3 Erasmus Law Review 130 Google Scholar; Hutchinson, Terry, ‘Developing Legal Research Skills: Expanding the Paradigm’ (2008) 32(3) Melbourne University Law Review 1065 Google Scholar.

55 See eg Galloway, Kate, Greaves, Kristoffer and Castan, Melissa, ‘Gatecrashing the Research Paradigm: Effective Integration of Online Technologies in Maximising Research Impact and Engagement in Legal Education’ (2013) Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association 115 Google Scholar.

56 Borgman, above (n 29) 47–48.

57 ibid 92. See also Hilary Charlesworth,’Foreword to the Third Edition’ AGLC, v.

58 ibid.

59 Rule 6.15.

60 ibid.

61 Borgman, above (n 28) 14.

62 We observe the difficulty students have with this distinction. the purpose of any citation guide is ensure that the reader is capable of quickly and reliably finding the original source. One of the major problems of the AGLC is that it has become overly prescriptive, and where there is a choice between being clear or being compliant, it demands compliance. I have seen students make some horrible decisions in trying to comply with the AGLC when the result is awkward, unclear or downright misleading.

63 AGLC, rule 6.15.7.

64 AGLC, rule 4.9.

65 AGLC, rule 6.5.

66 For an explanation of Twitter, see Munro v Hopkins [2017] EWHC 433 (QB), Appendix to Judgment, 25–28. See Twitter, <https://twitter.com/>.

67 Reddit <https://www.reddit.com/>.

68 Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/>.

69 YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/>.

70 A podcast is a streamable audio format, available for download or subscription on sites such as Soundcloud <https://soundcloud.com/stream> or iTunes <https://itunes.apple.com/au/genre/podcasts/id26?mt=2>.

71 AGLC, rule 4.9.

72 See, eg, many law journals published on Austlii which carry parallel citations to accommodate the online and publisher's version: Michael Kirby, ‘Constitutional Interpretation and Original Intent: A Form of Ancestor Worship?’ [2000] Melbourne University Law Review 1; (2000) 24(1) Melbourne University Law Review 1.

73 LexisNexis for example, allows the reader to select html, PDF, or Word versions of the same work.

74 AGLC, rule 6.5.3.

75 For examples of information literacies in the context of law, see, eg, Worley, Loyita and Spells, Sarah (eds), BIALL Handbook of Information Management (BIALL, 2nd edn, 2014)Google Scholar http://www.biall.org.uk/pages/handbook-of-legal-information-management-2nd-edition.html; British and Irish Association of Law Librarians, BIALL Information Literacy Statement (2012) <www.biall.org.uk/data/files/BIALL_Legal_Information_Literacy_Statement_July_2012.pdf >; Society of College, National and University Libraries, ‘7 Pillars of Information Literacy Through Digital Literacy Lens’ <http://www.biall.org.uk/data/files/SCONUL_Digital_Literacy_Lens_v4.pdf>.

76 Kudler, David, ‘What IS an Ebook?’ (The Book Designer: Practical Advice to Help Build Better Ebooks, 19 June 2015)Google Scholar <https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2015/06/what-is-an-ebook/>.

77 This link and the two that follow have been chosen to illustrate the different formats of digitized books freely available online. All three references are to different versions of the same work. It is not suggested that the search string URL be included with such a reference. It is only included hear to provide the reader with a direct link to the work viewed to illustrate this point. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition 1765–1769 (Google Books) <https://books.google.com.au/books?id=21BpRD8cR3wC&printsec=frontcover&dq=blackstone%27s+commentaries&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=blackstone%27s%20commentaries&f=false>.

78 See, eg, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) <https://www.amazon.com/Commentaries-Laws-England-William-Blackstone/dp/146793447X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1493181280&sr=8-7&keywords=blackstone%27s+commentaries#reader_146793447X>.

79 See, eg, Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) (Lonang Institute) <http://lonang.com/library/reference/blackstone-commentaries-law-england/>. In this case, the URL would be provided as this work is truly electronic, available in html format.

80 See, eg, Ana Maria Correia Ramalho and José Carlos Teixeira, ‘Reforming Scholarly Publishing and Knowledge Communication: From the Advent of the Scholarly Journal to the Challenges of Open Access’ (2005) 29 (4) Online Information Review 349. Works produced outside the traditional academic and commercial production and distribution channels, are known as ‘grey literature’. See, eg, Banks, Marcus A, ‘Towards a Continuum of Scholarship: The Eventual Collapse of the Distinction Between Grey and non-Grey Literature’ (2006) 22 (1) Publishing Research Quarterly 4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 While more common in disciplines other than law—see eg arXiv (www.arxiv.org)—SSRN for example has a Legal Scholarship Network. See <https://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/lsn/>.

82 More aligned with a social network for academics, see eg ORCID, ResearcherID, SSRN, Academia.edu etc.

83 For an explanation of pre- and post-prints, see, eg, Pinfield, Stephen, Gardner, Mike and MacColl, John, ‘Setting up an Institutional E-print Archive’ (2002) 31 Ariadne Google Scholar.

84 Michael Eisen and Leslie B Vosshall, ‘Coupling Pre-prints and Post-publication Peer Review for Fast, Cheap, Fair, and Effective Science Publishing’ ASAPbio (5 February 2016) <http://asapbio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Eisen_Vosshall_ASAPBio_WhitePaper.pdf>.

85 Rodriguez, Marko A, Bollen, Johan and Van de Sompel, Herbert, ‘The Convergence of Digital Libraries and the Peer-Review Process’ (2006) 32 (2) Journal of Information Science 149 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For challenges in the context of medicine, see, eg, Eysenbach, Gunther, ‘Challenges and Changing Roles for Medical Journals in the Cyberspace Age: Electronic Pre-prints and E-papers’ (1999) 1 (2) Journal of Medical Internet Research 9 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

86 Hibbitts, Bernard J, ‘Last Writes? Re-assessing the Law Review in the Age of Cyberspace’ (1996) 5 (4) Tilburg Law Review 299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 MacColl, J, Jones, R and Andrew, T, The Institutional Repository in the Digital Library (Woodhead Publishing 2006) 11 Google Scholar.

88 AGLC, rule 6.9.

89 See, eg, Galloway, Kate, ‘Landowners' vs Miners' Property Interests: The Unsustainability of Property as Dominion’ (27 May, 2013). (2012) 37(2) Alternative Law Journal 77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Available at SSRN: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2270814>.

90 See, eg, Graycar, Reg and Morgan, Jenny, ‘Thinking About Equality’ (2004) 27 (3) UNSW Law Journal 833 Google Scholar; Sydney Law School Research Paper No 07/23. Available at SSRN: <https://ssrn.com/abstract=985011>.

91 The SSRN notation is used here to direct the reader to the alternative (SSRN) source.

92 Platforms such as Twitter, Slideshare, and Piktochart for example, provide embedding code as a way to share digital objects on their respective platforms. The code will make the digital object itself visible on the face of the work. Using embedded code renders the source transparent, and is thus a superior means of traceability.

93 For advocacy of brevity in citation, see Salmon, above n 35.

94 Paul N Edwards et al, Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks and Research Challenges (Ann Arbor: Deep Blue, 2012) <http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/97552>, 7.

95 Zittrain, J, Albert, K and Lessig, L, ‘Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations. How to Make Legal Scholarship More Permanent’ (2014) 127 Harvard Law Review 176, 189Google Scholar; Riss, Paul, ‘Reference Rot: Does it Matter?’ (2015) 26 International Urogynecology Journal 1251 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

96 Zittrain, Albert and Lessig, ibid 177. See also Rhodes, Sarah, ‘Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive's Examination of URL Stability’ (2010) 102 Law Library Journal 581 Google Scholar.

97 ‘The DOI System’ <http://www.doi.org/>; Keele, Benjamin J, ‘A Primer on Digital Object Identifiers for Law Librarians’ (2010) 20 Trends in Law Library Management and Technology 35 Google Scholar.

98 See, eg, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edn, 2010), sections 6.31–6.32; The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed, 2010), [14.6].

99 Keele, Benjamin J, ‘Improving Digital Publishing of Legal Scholarship’ (2015) 34 (2) Legal Reference Services Quarterly 119 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (‘Improving Digital Publishing’); Benjamin J Keele, ‘What if Law Journal Citations Included Digital Object Identifiers?’ (18 March 2010) (unpublished manuscript) <http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1577074>.

100 Zittrain, Albert and Lessig, above n 95.

101 ‘About Perma.cc’ <https://perma.cc/>.

102 Keele, ‘Improving Digital Publishing’, above n 99, 130.

103 ‘Battling Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations with Perma’ (O'Connor's Annotations 16 May 2016) <https://www.oconnors.com/blog/2016/05/16/battling-link-and-reference-rot-in-legal-citations-with-perma/>. See earlier work identifying the prevalence of link rot in Supreme Court references: Liebler, Raizel and Liebert, June, ‘Something Rotten in the State of Legal Citation: The Lifespan of a United States Supreme Court Citation Containing an Internet Link (1996–2010)’ (2013) 15(2) Yale Journal of Law and Technology Google Scholar <http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjolt/vol15/iss2/2/>.

104 For example, see the form of citation used by the Melbourne University Law Review, for citation of the advance version of an article, such as Hayne, K M, ‘Government Contracts and Public Law’ (2017) 41 (1) Melbourne University Law Review Google Scholar (advance).