v.'> ]> Brief thoughts on judicial citations

Brief thoughts on judicial citations

Why is the standard judicial citation style so dumb? Here&a;s a random example:

Relying on its prior opinion in Central Florida Nuclear Freeze Campaign &v.; Walsh, 774 F. 2d 1515, 1521 (CA11 1985), cert. denied, 475 U. S. 1120 (1986), the Court of Appeals held:

In the first place, using parenthetical commas rather than actual parentheses is confusing to read in the middle of a sentence. In the second place, putting the volume number before the series number, rather than after it, is contrary to the big&h;endianism that all right&h;thinking people prefer. And, in the third place, it makes no sense to put the circuit number and the year after the number of the quote&a;s page, rather than after the number of the case&a;s page, when that information obviously applies to the case rather than to the page. An alternative might be something like:

Relying on its prior opinion in Central Florida Nuclear Freeze Campaign &v.; Walsh (F. ser. 2 vol. 774 case 1515 (CA11, 1985, cert. denied (US vol. 475 order 1120 (1986)))) p. 1521, the Court of Appeals held:

Nesting parentheses also makes it easier to do fancy things like selectively hiding levels of citations that you don&a;t care about:

Relying on its prior opinion in Central Florida Nuclear Freeze Campaign &v.; Walsh (F. ser. 2 vol. 774 case 1515) p. 1521, the Court of Appeals held:

Or even all levels of citations that are not necessary for understanding:

Relying on its prior opinion in Central Florida Nuclear Freeze Campaign &v.; Walsh p. 1521, the Court of Appeals held: