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Legal Information and the Development of American Law:
Further Thinking about the Thoughts of Bob Berring

Saturday, October 21st, 2006
Boalt Hall School of Law, UC Berkeley

Neutral Citation, Court Web Sites, and Improved Access to Case Law

Peter W. Martin, Jane M. G. Foster Professor of Law (Cornell)

In 1994 the Wisconsin Bar and Judicial Council together urged the Wisconsin Supreme Court to take two dramatic steps with the combined aim of improving access to state case law: 1) adopt a new system of neutral format citation and 2) establish a digital archive of decisions directly available to all publishers and the public. The recommendations set off a firestorm, and the Wisconsin court deferred decision on the package.

In the dozen or so years since those events, the background conditions have shifted dramatically. Neutral format citation has been endorsed by the AALL and ABA and formally adopted in a fair number of states, including Wisconsin. Thomson's acquisition of the West Publishing Company in 1996 removed the principal source of opposition. Court Web sites, non-existent in 1994, are now a standard feature of e-government with the result that the idea of a public case archive, open to all, no longer stretches imaginations.

With the environment seemingly so much more hospitable to the 1994 Wisconsin recommendations, one might expect to see them widely implemented. Yet only two states have effectively put them to work in tandem. This paper describes the factors that came together in the right way, at the right time, in those states together with the apparent results. It also explores some of the reasons why those two stand today as lonely illustrations of "best practice".

Note: The current version of Professor Martin's paper is "Neutral Citation, Court Web Sites, and Access to Case Law" (December 2006). Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 06-047 Available at SSRN or access-to-law.com .