Citation Standards July 14, 2011

The charge for the universal adoption of public domain, medium neutral citation by courts is heating up again in the United States. See also the post from Illinois  on this issue.

All courts in Canada have adopted the neutral citation.  For a history of the movement in Canada visit the Canadian Citation Committee website.

“The Canadian Citation Committee is an ad hoc group formed to support the standardization efforts of the Judges Technology Advisory Committee (JTAC) of the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC). The members volunteer their time to produce useful standards for the Canadian legal community.”

This committee continues to refine the standards and they developed specific guides to  judgment preparation and case naming standards to assist the courts:

• The Preparation, Citation and Distribution of Canadian Decisions  http://www.informationjuridique.ca/ccc-ccr/docs/preparation/prepdecisions_20090402_en.pdf
• Case naming guidelines http://www.informationjuridique.ca/ccc-ccr/docs/cn/casenaming_20090227_en_rev.pdf

This issue is tracked by many Slaw bloggers, and Slaw.ca is a rich source for commentary on citation standardization in Canada. Some posts of interest include CLIC history and the McGill guide.