Subject: Public Domain Citation Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 12:27:18 -0800 (PST) From: "Terri O. Saye" To: citation@teo.uscourts.gov I strongly support the following letter and urge you to adopt the public domain citation format. Terri O. Saye Catalog Librarian Kathrine R. Everett Law Library University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (919) 962-0836 P.O. Box 19405 Washington, D.C. 20036 http://www.public-domain.org ABA Citation Resolution Suite 4-512 Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Washington, DC 20544 via Internet: citation@ao.uscourts.gov Dear members of the U.S. Judicial Conference: We write to urge the United States Judicial Conference to adopt a public domain citation for judicial opinions. The Union for the Public Domain (UPD) was created in 1996. The UPD is an independent membership organization. Our goal is to protect and enhance the public domain in matters concerning intellectual property. Our membership is a diverse mixture of persons with eclectic backgrounds, including many computer and software experts, small businesses, students, professors, lawyers, librarians, concerned citizens, and others who are seeking common ground in order to provide a stronger voice for the public's rights in matters concerning intellectual property. The UPD strongly urges the court to adopt a system of public domain citations. As the court is aware, at present only the United States Supreme Court publishes its own official reporter of court decisions. This reporter is published years after the opinion is issued by the court. As a consequence, the citation for most federal case law is based upon the page and volume numbers of books sold by West Publishing, a firm owned by Thomson, the Canadian publishing giant. This may have been reasonable when West was the only publisher of lower court federal opinions. However, today electronic publishing has allowed multiple sources of case law. The exclusive use of West's citation system today impedes the use of these alternative sources. A system of citation which is based upon the private publishing of opinions in books also has obvious technical limitations in today's world of computers and the Internet. Why wait for a citation until a book is published? How should page numbers be represented on Internet Web pages or on a CD ROM? Why should lawyers and the public have to go back and change their citations when West delivers its printed volumes? Clearly it is time to embrace a more modern citation system that is appropriate for the wide range on technologies used to disseminate legal information.