Subject: ABA Citation Resolution
Date:    Fri, 14 Mar 1997 09:36:58 -0700
From:    jdm@csn.org (John D. MacFarlane)
To:      citation@teo.uscourts.gov

Appellate Court and Circuit Administration Division
ATTN: ABA Citation Resolution
Suite 4-512
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
Washington, DC  20544

Sirs:

     As a former state Attorney General (Colorado, 1975-83), I have 
long held a close interest in the availability of electronic legal 
research materials to the general public. I commend your willingness 
to solicit public comments on this issue.

     Comments have been solicited regarding the following two 
matters:

     (1) Whether the federal courts should adopt the form of official 
citation for court decisions recommended by the ABA resolution; and,

     COMMENT: I strongly support the ABA Citation Resolution. All 
court decisions of record should be freely available to the public 
domain. The electronic retrieval systems offered by Westlaw and Lexis 
have been transition systems and, as such, served their purpose well 
in the absence of inexpensive publicly-available alternatives. With 
the advent of the Internet, however, public information should be 
provided in a format by which it can be made freely available. The 
ABA Citation Resolution would provide the necessary format for court 
opinions.

     (2) The costs and benefits such a decision would have on the 
courts, the bar, and the public.

     COMMENT: The ABA Citation Resolution recommendation offers a 
cost-free alternative format for court opinions. All it requires is 
that each opinion contain a unique number and that each paragraph be 
sequentially numbered. There is no additional expense inherent in 
this procedure, and it would be consistent with existing indexing 
techniques.

     Although the federal courts have access to Westlaw and Lexis, 
many state courts, lawyers, and certainly the public do not, because 
of their relatively high cost. Court opinions available without 
charge on the Internet would provide the missing element necessary 
for dissemination of vital public information on which a large part 
of the public depends.

     A similar case involves the U.S. Securities and Exchange 
Commission corporate public filings, which are now available free of 
charge on the SEC web page. These were formerly available (in 
electronic form) only through Lexis. Corporate financial information 
which has been theoretically available to the public for decades is 
finally achieving its original promise. The courts can do no less 
with legal opinions. If one is supposed to know the law, one must be 
able to access it without paying exceptional charges. To charge fees 
to access the law is, in my opinion, not qualitatively different than 
to charge fees for exercising the right to vote.

                                   Respectfully submitted,

                                   John D. MacFarlane
                                   2080 Bellaire Street
                                   Denver, CO  80207
                                   (303) 377-0490
                                   jdm@csn.org