Re: Help! West Publishing seeks broad change in FOIA (fwd)

Michael Trittipo writes:
>
>On 3/1/95, Nic Herriges wrote:
>>
>>Actually, it seems that a lot of this type of debate could be avoided if
>>we developed a systematic, vendor-neutral citation system instead of the
>>vendor-specific system inherited from a technologically different era.
>>Are there plans of this nature afoot or is the legal profession well
>>behind the times in the standardization arena (or am I living in a
>>fool's paradise)?
>
>Given that the purpose of any citation (more generally, of any
>bibliographic reference) is to point the reader to a physically
>identifiable source (be it a manuscript, a book, a CD-ROM or a file
>on a hard drive accessible by modem), every citation involves reference
>to some specific physical source produced by some specific person or
>entity.

Consider two possible citation schemes:

• Case number, court and paragraph number.
• Case title, date, court and paragraph number.

These are two vendor-neutral citation systems which do not refer to a specific physical source (assuming we have a tight definition of what constitutes a paragraph).

If all US courts have ALL judicial decisions available in electronic form (via BBS) as is the future plan, then this information is sufficient for anybody to locate a copy of the decision. If vendors truly add anything to what is provided there, they can index their editions using these citations.

>Much of the debate regarding citation form is in effect a debate whether
>to let citation forms evolve via competition as has been done historically
>(thus letting the hypothetical LPH use its own citation form instead of
>having to use anyone else's pages), with legal writers free to cite to
>any source they find reliable.

But that is not actually what happens if the governement regulates for use of a particular citation (i.e. West page numbers). Lets at least have something resembling a level playing field if we are going to let free enterprise choose!!

>This better fits the free enterprise
>system under which consumer choice, not government fiat, is believed to
>produce better results in the long run. Thus, if LPH produces a useful
>product, people should be free to cite _it_, without any need for
>cross-references.

How can free-enterprise lead to a better citation system than a vendor-neutral, presentation-neutral scheme? How will such a scheme come into existence by the operation of free enterprise when it is not in the interests of publishers to provide a vendor-neutral citation scheme but rather to establish or protect monopolies?

Government intervention is not an evil to be avoided at all cost. Governments exist precisely because some intervention is needed some of the time. The key is picking when it is in the balance beneficial and when it is not. The balance in this situation is firmly in favour of intervention so that legal decisions can be made available at the minimum total cost to the legal researcher and ultimately the consumer of legal advice.

A beautiful example of free-enterprise leading to a completely self-seeking and inefficient process is the free-enterprise land title transfer mess operating in many US jurisdictions. Last century, an Australian (Torrens) invented a central registory system (variants of which have since been adopted widely elsewhere in the world) for recording land ownership and transfers. Transfer and title checks can be done very cheaply with great certainty because the government intervened and put and end to the endless checking of the chain of title.

Contrast this to much of the US where the cost of a title search or transfer of land (not the cost of legal advice, just the administrative costs) has always been orders of magnitude higher. [this may have changed recently by computerisation but I doubt it]

Why? Because it is not in the interests of the free-enterprise that controls the system to provide the service any cheaper and free-enterprise does not have the flexibility to change the law to fit a new scheme that legislators have.

Common sense must prevail here and government intervention is, in this particular case, the fastest way of achieving the common sense solution.

Tim Arnold-Moore (LL.B - Melb) | Multimedia Database Systems, CITRI  |
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