Big News in Legal Citation!

This is big legal citation news. As stated in this ABA Journal post, the “cleaned up” citation has made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. What is “cleaned up”, you might be asking, fully aware that you’ll likely regret it?

Legal writing is one of several varieties of writing in which citing one’s sources is of great importance. If you are going to represent to a court and/or a party that the law says a certain thing, you generally need to back it up with what is known as “authority”: essentially, a statute, judicial opinion, secondary source, etc., that supports your legal position. However, lawyers also, either out of candor, adherence to citation rules, or a simple desire to bolster their point, also cite, or at least account for, at least some of the authority cited by the source they’re citing. 

For instance, if you cite a 2013 decision from the Arkansas Court of Appeals that has a really helpful quote, and that case relies on an earlier case from a higher court (like the Supreme Court of Arkansas), you’d want to make a note of that. But maybe the case you’re citing cites a lot of other authority, and/or goes back and forth between quoting a couple of old cases and inserting its own language. Your citation can get pretty jumbled! For example, here’s an excerpt from a blog post discussing a journal article in support of the “cleaned up” citation*:

Let’s say that we represent Mr. Smith in his claim that officers used excessive force. In our brief we write:

Officers used excessive force when they arrested Smith.

In evaluating these claims, a court must consider (1) whether “the handcuffs were unreasonably tight, [sic] (2) [whether] the defendants ignored the plaintiff’s pleas that the handcuffs were too tight; and (3) the degree of injury to the wrists.” Lynch ex rel. Lynch v. City of Mount Vernon, 567 F.Supp.2d 459. 468-469 (S.D.N.Y.2008) (emphasis and alteration omitted) (quoting Esmont v. City of N.Y., 371 F.Supp.2d 202, 215 (E.D.N.Y.2005)).

Higginbotham v. City of New York, 105 F. Supp. 3d 369, 377 (S.D.N.Y. 2015).

There are even clunkier examples that would really drive the point home, but I’m going to save you that torture. It suffices to say, there’s a fair bit of unnecessary information and verbiage in the passage above, and this is a common issue in legal writing.

The “cleaned up” citation is merely a way to try to smooth things out a bit so we can avoid quotations that are over full of citations to other cases, parenthetical, bracketed language, etc. As much as I enjoy legal research and writing, speaking both as a lawyer and former judicial law clerk, I’m all for simplifying this part Of the process. Even if I do still hold out hope for a term that feels more suitable, something, along the lines of “streamlined”, “pruned”, “neatened”, etc...but, of course, better.

Also, here’s hoping the first sentence in this post is the legal nerdiest thing that is ever posted on this page.

*See how easily you can end up with multiple sources involved for just one point?