Talk:Case citation

Medium neutral citation
"Some courts have done away with volume numbers entirely. The Supreme Court of Ireland cites cases by year and page number; e.g. Aer Rianta Cpt v. Ryanair Ltd., [2004] IESC 24 (2 April 2004)." I doubt that this is an example of the Supreme Court of Ireland ideosynchratically decided to 'do away with volume numbers'; it is not courts who publish volumes of law reports, it is legal publishers. I think that this is likely to be an example of medium neutral citation. See, for more about this, the standards published by the Law Foundation of Australia. This page does need a separate section explaining Medium neutral citation, I suspect.SilasM 05:32, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * No-one has leapt to the defence of the formulation I criticised back in january. I'm going to delete that sentence.--SilasM 09:32, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

State court citation
Hello to Hydriotaphia:

Actually, the citations for the New York and California courts were correct, so I'm changing them back. If you read through recent opinions from the Web sites of the New York Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court, you'll see what I mean. Just download any three or four opinions at random.

I just double-checked to be absolutely sure I'm right on this point. Here are the URLs:

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/ctapps/latdec.htm

It's important to be aware that many states have very different citation systems. Unless you plan to engage in purely transactional practice (in which case you don't need to know about court citation), you don't want to get admitted pro hac vice to argue some client's important case to the supreme courts of California or New York, and then give the middle finger to the justices (or judges, in New York) by using the Bluebook citation system in your briefs. To them, it looks like you confused them with the federal courts, and the last thing you want to do is remind them that they're not federal judges!

They might forgive you if you're slick at oral argument, but it's a lot easier to show respect for the courts to begin with.

--Coolcaesar 06:23, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Merge from Citation (legal cases) to Court citation #England and Wales
Have merged citation (legal cases) into this article - it was mostly redundant - and will make that page a redirect. I query whether:
 * 1) the section which is now "simple examples" is needed at all
 * 2) external links should be at the bottom of the page rather than at the end of #England and Wales.

I've left them both as they are, for now. AndyJones 16:39, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Title of this page
Following discussion between myself and User:mmmbeer was on Citation (legal cases), before the merge. Does anyone have any thoughts? My personal preference would be to reverse the merge: make this page "Citation (legal cases)" or similar, and have "Court citation" as the redirect. However, are the terms are used differently in North America? AndyJones 16:53, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Legal citation

There is also an article Legal citation, should we consider a merge? Mmmbeer 19:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, and also there's Court citation, linked from Legal citation. I think if I'd been aware of that page I wouldn't have created this one, although in fact "court citation" is not something we say in the UK, and there were no links to it from "citation" which is why I thought this article was necessary. When I have more time, possibly tomorrow, I'll see if there's anything in this article that can usefully be merged to "court citation". This page can then become the redirect. AndyJones 23:55, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm not thrilled with "court citation" either. If anything it's "case citation" or something of the sort. I think that there's lots of overlap among others too. Mmmbeer 01:03, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
 * OK, done that. I left the message (above) on Court citation. I will copy this discussion there, too. AndyJones 16:53, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I would support either a rename to case citation or a merge with legal citation. Court citation just sounds funny to Americans (although I don't know if it actually sounds right to lawyers in Commonwealth countries).  --Coolcaesar 03:33, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Absolutely not. I qualified in the UK, and I assumed the page was here because that's what an American would call the subject. I'll make the move today or tomorrow. AndyJones 11:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Date
This article says that the date is the date when the opinion was published, but I believe it is more likely that it is the decision date, not the publishing date. In rare instances, cases are decided, but not published until a little while later. Is this a sofixit, or do you think I have erred? -- LV (Dark Mark)  21:47, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Article split
It may not be necessary right now, but I think sooner or later it may be wise to create sub-articles for each country's style such as Case citation in the United States, case citation in Canada, and so forth. The potential for detail in each country's citation style may result in a huge article when finished. This may be particularly necessary as each country often cites other countries' cases differently. Say for, example, when writing about an Australian or English case in a North American country the "v" has a period (such as John v. Smith) even though the native country will cite the case without the period (John v Smith).PullUpYourSocks 15:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with PUYS. Having just added a section of New Zealand, it occurrs to me that this section could substantiate an article in itself with consideration of histroical report series, online reporting and other points.203.173.140.82 04:55, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Should there be a link to the UK free legal database, or just commercial ones?
AndyJones,

It saddens me that you would find it more appropriate to delete a link to annother free info database because it has been denied public documents (judgments) by the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting, rather than write to the Council and use your efforts to have them release the copyright. AustLII had similar problems until enough people supported it - indeed even Wikipedia was limited to start with. Is it not time to send people to the site so that they can complain that the common law of England is copyrighted to the Incorp council of law reporting who (with your favoured commercial link sites) will charge them a fee if they want to know the law (which, of course, they are presumed to know).

But, it is not for an Australian lawyer to emancipate the Brits. I leave it for you to restore the BAILII link, unless you think that we should all be denied awareness of the free access legal database of the UK because it is presently crippled by the Incorp Council.

Regards FedLawyer 13:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * What the hell? I was already alarmed when I learned in law school about how the U.K. until very recently had no separation of powers at its highest court level and how general warrants are still allowed there (they are outlawed in the United States by the particularity clause of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution).  Now I'm really glad that I practice in a jurisdiction where the courts have always held that there is no copyright in the law &mdash; because American copyright protects creativity, not mere labor!  --Coolcaesar 01:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Not wishing to intrude too much on the self-congratulatory flag-waving, but... Firstly, the conventions of the British constitution mean the House of Lords has kept its legislative and judiciary powers separate since 1844, and nobody has tried to tamper with that arrangement since 1883, so the problem which "alarmed" you isn't exactly "until very recently", and if the idea of having the equivalents of the Senate and Supreme Court have the same name and be located in different bits of the same building is too terrifying, don't worry yourself too much - the Law Lords are moving to a new "Supreme Court" in a couple of years' time. Secondly, I have no idea what the modern British legal equivalent of the "general warrant" you refer to might be (it's not a term I've ever come across in practice), but if you're concerned about the rules governing warrants in Britain I'd suggest you have a look at PACE 1984, as well as considering whether the Fourth Amendment ban on said warrants is so terribly important when held up alongside the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and indefinite detention without trial. Finally, moving on to the issue actually under discussion... Although very frustrating, it's the ICLR's own reports which are copyrighted, not "the law" itself (hence the appearance of many alternative series of law reports, including the ones on BAILII) - and as well as containing some element of creativity (specifically the headnotes and summaries), they should be considered privately-funded research, rather than publically-available knowledge - unless you count the collection, compilation and collation of all research as "mere labor"? I should perhaps note that I wholeheartedly approve of BAILII, and agree there should be a link on the article.


 * Notwithstanding someone's abuse of me, above, I had in fact allowed a link to BAILII to remain in the article, here. I agree with your general point, though. AndyJones 19:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Order of entries
Hey wikipedians, could we please consider placing the entries on this article in alphabetical order? Its a bit ridiculous to have the USA at the top. I could ratonalise England being at the top, since that's the cradle of the Common Law, but its not. I think it reflects a US bias. You might argue that the US has a longer entry than the others. But the way the article is currently constructed seems to place England, Australia and Canada as mere afterthoughts and side-notes. They're unlikely to get attention (and expansion) in that way. An An 22:25, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Go for it Anna - or make them seperate pages like the German one (though the intro may need a bit of reworking ot to that. FedLawyer 06:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I've got no objection to that. bd2412  T 13:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Neither do I, as long as the resulting article is as internally coherent as the article in its present state. I've seen too many articles grow out of control thanks to well-intentioned edits, which is why I recently researched and rewrote Lawyer from scratch. And then I looked at Attorney at law and realized that had become a mess (starting with the incorrect spelling; it should be attorney-at-law). --Coolcaesar 07:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

How do you pronounce v?
I just stumbled across an interesting question while reading the article on Jarndyce and Jarndyce. How does everyone actually read case names out loud in their jurisdiction? This is probably quite relevant to the article. For example, in my experience, California lawyers usually just say the letter "v," (as in "vee") although I've also heard "versus" and "against." I think one law school professor did say "and" but that was because he studied law in London. --Coolcaesar 01:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
 * In a country like Canada--and presumably this was inherited from the UK--you pronounce a civil case like Smith v Jones as "Smith and Jones", but for criminal cases you would call R. v. Smith, "Arr Vee Smith". It's an odd distinction I never really understood. --PullUpYourSocks 03:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
 * In the United States acceptable pronuncations of the "v." in "Roe v. Wade" or "Furman v. Georgia" is "Vee" or "Versus." Whether it is a civil or criminal case is irrelevant.  There are also probably numerous alternative methods as well, but these would be the most common by far. --Tim4christ17 13:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, in Britain you hear all of these. "And" is probably most common, but you often hear "vee" and "against". AndyJones 13:22, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
 * In England and Wales, it is spoken as 'and' in civil cases and most commonly 'against', but sometimes 'versus' or 'vee' in criminal cases.  There are some exceptions to this, for example judicial review is a civil procedure however since the crown brings the case they are often spoken as if they are criminal cases.BaseTurnComplete 14:14, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

“In Australia and England, the ‘v’ between the parties is pronounced ‘and’ in a civil action and ‘against’ in a criminal action. It is not pronounced ‘versus’ as it is in the United States of America.” -- Australian Guide to Legal Citation 2nd Ed p.31

Now I know very little about legal citation in England so I won’t comment any further on that, but in Australia the above statement is largely true. It’s considered a faux pas to say ‘vee’ or ‘versus’ (although you occasionally hear people say ‘and’ for criminal cases and vice versa.) Joaq99 11:35, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

In England, you can pronounce the "v" like you would when saying the alphabet, but I think in normal crimianl proceedings (and some civil proceedings too), you say "versus", as in "the Crown versus Dobbs". That brings me to another point - if a case has "R v X" in it, you normally say "The Crown v X", since R means "Regina" and thus the Queen/Crown, as criminal prosecutions are purported to be bought by the state and thus the Crown. Please, however, read the box about legal advice on my userpage--Thehistorian10 (talk) 18:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC)thehistorian10

That is not true. In England the "v" is pronounced "and" in civil proceedings and "against" in criminal proceedings. See, for example, Glanville Williams, Learning the Law, Eleventh Edition, Stevens, 1982, page 18. James500 (talk) 20:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Joaq99 (is this guy funny, painful or both?) is correct about Australia and England. The Australian Guide to Legal Citation says the same in its current, third edition, p 43. But, James500, can one rely for current usage on a book from 1982? I think you're right, but there is surely some recent source. And what say the Scots, who also use "v"? --Wikiain (talk) 00:35, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * In Scotland we pronounce v as against, as in Donoghue against Stevenson. To pronounce it versus in particular is considered a rather gauche slip. Endie (talk) 11:22, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Try the most recent edition of that book, which I did look at some time ago, but don't have a copy of. James500 (talk) 10:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC) The fourth edition of OSCOLA says, at page 15, that it is "against" in an an application for judicial review. I can't find anything in that publication about other types of proceedings. James500 (talk) 11:22, 4 November 2011 (UTC) As for your guide to legal citation, my understanding is that "criminal action" is a misnomer. James500 (talk) 11:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

James500: a Google for "criminal action" turns up, among other things, this from the Magistrates Court of Tasmania and this, quoted, from West's Encyclopedia of American Law (2008). --Wikiain (talk) 15:37, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Glanville Williams, same place, page 4, says that it is a "misnomer". I was under the impression that one spoke of a criminal prosecution. Perhaps this only applies to England and Wales. James500 (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

That seems to be right: BAILII has very few E&W occurrences of "criminal action" in the sense of a procedure. --Wikiain (talk) 21:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I remember my law lecturer (in England) used to stop students in their track if they referred to a legal case with "verses".

I remember him interjecting that Donoghue and Stevenson was an important case establishing the tort of negligence. Not a football match. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.132.239.196 (talk) 13:29, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Year at end or just after names of parties
I was just looking through some old volumes of the Federal Supplement in the county law library and realized that American citations used to put the year right after the names of the parties until 1961, when there was a sudden switch to putting them at the end and in parentheses. Does anyone know why this happened? I suspect it was probably the Bluebook making yet another weird arbitrary change in its rules, but I'm not sure. --Coolcaesar 06:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Should we be putting so many reporter abbreviations into this article?
We have to remember that Wikipedia is for a general audience, not lawyers. A user just inserted a huge number of abbreviations for English law reports. While I appreciate the sentiment, the problem is that if we start doing that, then American editors will insist on inserting abbreviations for the giant number of American reporters. We have anywhere from 30 to 50 important reporters (the exact number depends upon whether one considers the official reporters for the smaller states to be "important"), and between 100 to 200 minor reporters for courts of limited jurisdiction and administrative agencies. For example, the huge Division of Workers' Compensation of the California Department of Industrial Relations has its own unofficial reporter, California Compensation Cases (cited as Cal. Comp. Cases). And I'm sure Canada and Australia have similarly complex systems. It seems to me we should limit this article to the most notable reporters like U.S., All E.R., C.L.R., and so on. --Coolcaesar 22:44, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Is there some small number of places that we can link to where all of this info would be available? Or can we create such a place somewhere outside this article? It's useful, we should provide access to it somewhere. - Jmabel | Talk 21:32, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would be a good idea to create a list for all reporter abbreviations and have links there from here. Then we can keep this article limited to the reporters for the most important courts.  --Coolcaesar 04:12, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea (assuming someone from the relevant jurisdictions is prepared to take on the work). I agree this is useful information, but that this article would be swamped by a complete list. For the UK, for example, I think it would be fine if this article just listed W.L.R., AllER, and each of the current series of the official reports. The rest could be in the new article.AndyJones 12:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Example formats
There seem to be two different formats being used for examples in the article: one with a sample citation in large type, followed by bulleted explanations of each part (used in the sections on the U.S. and the Philippines), and one using table syntax (used in the section on Australia, for one).

But where there is likely to be confusion, as in the two New Zealand examples, the examples given in the latter format do not give any guidance. Similarly, for the Australia example, one might ask why the "[year of reporter]" field is left blank. --zenohockey 05:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Vendor Neutral - Pagination
West tried to copyright its pagination at one point, and a court upheld it, only to be overturned. I don't have the citation to that case offhand, but this could be relevant information, if anyone is willing to put more in on the point.LH 04:28, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Is their own page number used in the citation? :) JulesH 18:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

UK Law Reports list
Is this out of date? I was looking for information on a case cited as Collins v Secretary of State for the Environment and Epping Forest DC (1989) EGCS 15, but EGCS doesn't show up as a valid report on the list in the article. JulesH 18:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Other sources suggest EGCS is Estates Gazette Case Summaries. JulesH 18:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Philippine case citation
Isn't it that Phil. Reports were discontinued sometime in the 1960's? --125.60.235.212 (talk) 04:08, 23 August 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it is still being produced. OTH, this site seems to have a database of case citations for cases pre-1941. --112.202.56.201 (talk) 20:54, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

New Zealand citation
With the release of the New Zealand Law Style Guide in 2010, the NZ section needs a bit of a cleanup, as the Guide is followed both by the Courts and by academics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.73.75.243 (talk) 03:13, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

United States: State courts
I have transferred the following text by Da5id403 from the body of the article, where it appeared after the statement "When a case appears in both an official reporter and a regional reporter, either citation can be used":


 * No, this is generally not true. Jurisdictions that have their own reporters as well as West's regional ones promulgate rules of court as to which should be used. The most common is to have parallel citations. However, notwithstanding all this, most jurisdictions have citation prescriptions set out as a rule of court, such as California Rules Of Court, rule 1.200. I would put an in-line citation to the Internet version of the California Rules of Court, but I just spent two hours writing a couple paragraphs with actual in-line citations to dodgy websites such as the cyber home of the California Supreme Court and the comprehensive jurisdiction by jurisdiction citation format maintained by that subversive institution, Cornell University. All of it was deleted by Wikipedia's spam filter. Inquiring minds would like to know how such a thing could happen. Color me pissed off . Da5id403 (talk) 20:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

The bolding was in the original text. Andrew Gwilliam (talk) 02:14, 5 November 2011 (UTC).

Unpublished Decisions
Currently, section 8.4, "Unpublished Decisions" states in its first sentence: "A growing number of court decisions are not published in case reporters. For example, only 7% of the opinions of the California intermediate courts (the Courts of Appeal) are published each year. This is mainly because judges certify only significant decisions for publication, due to the massive number of frivolous appeals flowing through the courts and the importance of avoiding information overload.[16]"

The reference to frivolous appeals and information overload as the reason for non-publication of decisions is completely erroneous. The author has cited Schmier v. Supreme Court (2000) 78 Cal. App. 4th 703 (the plaintiff sought an injunction requiring publication of all cases) to support his or her conclusions. However, those conclusions are not found in that case. Specifically, the court held: "...the complaint does not identify any specific injury appellant or those he purports to represent have suffered or will suffer due to the nonpublication or depublication of an appellate opinion. Absent such an allegation, appellant lacks standing in this action. However, as discussed below, even were he able to allege a specific situation wherein nonpublication harmed or would harm him, he would be unable to state a viable cause of action. ." (Schmier, at p. 708.) After a discussion of the California rules regarding case publication and some rules of the Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals, the court held: "The rules were established by persons in possession of a public office with authority to do so, and they comport with applicable statutory and constitutional requirements. Since an injunction will not lie to restrain respondents from implementing them, appellant has not stated and cannot state a claim entitling him to relief. (Code Civ. Proc., § 430.10, subd. (e.)" and affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the case. Nowhere did the court discuss frivolous appeals, as such, or information overload.

The court began its analysis with reference to the California Rules Of Court governing California Court Of Appeal opinion publication: "Rule 976(b) provides that no opinion of the Court of Appeal may be published in the Official Reports unless it "(1) establishes a new rule of law, applies an existing rule to a set of facts significantly different from those stated in published opinions, or modifies, or criticizes with reasons given, an existing rule; [¶] (2) resolves or creates an apparent conflict in the law; [¶] (3) involves a legal issue of continuing public interest; or [¶] (4) makes a significant contribution to legal literature by reviewing either the development of a common law rule or the legislative or judicial history of a provision of a constitution, statute, or other written law." Rule 976(c) provides that a Court of Appeal opinion shall not be published unless a majority of the court rendering the opinion certifies that it meets one of the standards of rule 976(b). It further provides that a Court of Appeal "opinion certified for publication shall not be published, and an opinion not so certified shall be published, on an order of the Supreme Court to that effect." (Schmier at p. 706.) As can be seen, the rule makes no reference whatsoever to frivolous appeals or information overload.

California Rules Of Court, rule 8.891, subdivision (e), provides a procedure for the imposition of monetary sanctions in the case of a frivolous appeal. Subdivision (e) provides:¶ "(1) On motion of a party or its own motion, the appellate division may impose sanctions, including the award or denial of costs, on a party or an attorney for: ¶ (A) Taking a frivolous appeal or appealing solely to cause delay; or ¶ (B) Committing any unreasonable violation of these rules. (2) A party's motion under (1) must include a declaration supporting the amount of any monetary sanction sought and must be served and filed before any order dismissing the appeal but no later than 10 days after the appellant's reply brief is due. If a party files a motion for sanctions with a motion to dismiss the appeal and the motion to dismiss is not granted, the party may file a new motion for sanctions within 10 days after the appellant's reply brief is due. ¶ (3) The court must give notice in writing if it is considering imposing sanctions. Within 10 days after the court sends such notice, a party or attorney may serve and file an opposition, but failure to do so will not be deemed consent. An opposition may not be filed unless the court sends such notice. ¶ (4) Unless otherwise ordered, oral argument on the issue of sanctions must be combined with oral argument on the merits of the appeal."

As can be seen, frivolous appeals are governed by the imposition of monetary sanctions and information overload is governed by the rules of publication in the first instance. The court did not cite to the frivolous appeal rule because the relief sought by the plaintiff and the holding of the Court had nothing to do with that issue. Ditto with information overload. With all due respect to the authors who have vastly improved this article, as it stands now ths section is erroneous and has the primary element of the conservative "lawsuit reform" POV.

Appeal from criminal judgments by indigent defendants is governed by the California Supreme Court case of People v. Wende (1979) 25 C3d 436. This case includes an extended discussion of frivolous criminal appeals and the essentially constitutional right of a criminal defendant to file one. It also sets forth in detail the procedures to be followed by attorneys and the courts in these situations. Essentially, it requires the attorney to set forth a detailed statement of the facts and legal issues, a statement that no appealable issue could be found, and a request for the Court of Appeal to review the case to see if it can find any issues. It is called a Wende brief.

I offer the following not by way of original research, but by way of background, I clerked for the Third District Court of Appeal during the period of 1979-1983 — during the period of time that Wende briefs first started rolling in. Several members of the court were infuriated that they were required to, as they believed, to act as an advocate for a criminal defendant after an attorney specifically retained at public expense to represent the defendant filed a brief stating that there were no appealable issues. As it turns out, on extremely rare occasion the court did find an appealable issue and reversed the conviction based thereon. Da5id403 (talk) 20:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

probably a case of a wikitext TYPO -- (right?)
At https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=R._v._Sharpe&oldid=475175528 there is an entry in the "Citations" field of the infobox ("SCCInfoBox") that does not look right to me. The contents of that field, get (gets?) displayed as "". I cannot see how that would be helpful to any reader.

It seems plausible that an editor did something wrong with the wikitext of the infobox ("SCCInfoBox"). Note that Template:Infobox SCC has an    tag, which expands to this WARNING:
 * Transclusion of Template:esoteric changed to link to prevent incorrect categorization of this page. DexDor(talk) 05:50, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

...Does that give any clue, as to what the problem might be?

Could it simply be a case where, due to some reason (see the stuff above about the  tag), now the " | citations = " field MUST be explicitly present in the wikitext of the infobox in the article, even if the right-hand-side of that field is (sorta) "empty"? It does appear that this field is MISSING from the wikitext of the infobox in the article, for the article example I found. Could that explain the problem? If so, then would perhaps an edit notice be appropriate, to alert editors to some rule which must be obeyed, in order to avoid the ugly result ((something getting displayed as "" -- !)) mentioned above?

Any advice would be appreciated. What is the "Citations" field of the infobox ("SCCInfoBox") supposed to be used for? Is there a good example of how it looks, when the wikitext has been handled correctly? Would it do any good if I tried to create a Special:WhatLinksHere/Case citation link? (to try to find some good examples?) ...Or may a Special:WhatLinksHere/SCCInfoBox link, instead? Or Special:WhatLinksHere/Infobox SCC? Or would it be, maybe Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Infobox SCC? '''AHA! -- I think that's it!''' I found a helpful list of articles, with that last "try". Now, do any of those "example" articles -- (probably mostly GOOD examples) -- serve to indicate what is wrong with /slash, what should be changed in, the article mentioned first, above?

Also, does Template:Infobox_SCOTUS_case shed any light on this question?

(By the way, Help:What links here claims that [quote:] Within the Toolbox section on the left-hand side of every page is a link labeled "What links here" [end quote]; but I thought I remembered a time (maybe long ago?) when one did not have to do any mouse clicks in order to SEE the "What links here" link.  Now, I had trouble finding it, because I had to (figure out that I had to) click on "Toolbox" on the left-hand side of my page, in order to be able to see the "What links here" link.  (Then, maybe I could have avoided the escapade with the Special:WhatLinksHere/... links I was trying above!)

Regards! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 22:41, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * It looks like, in this edit, User:Unavoidable made inclusion of the "citations" parameter mandatory. I've added them to fix this particular problem; but query whether a template change like this should be made without investigating its impact. TJRC (talk) 23:14, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I checked and, it appears that the infobox was introduced in this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=R._v._Sharpe&diff=next&oldid=67763453 and I do not see any change (recent or otherwise) to the infobox in that article, that would seem to relate to the error -- "if any" in the infotext.


 * So the problem is [more likely to be] a case of, some recent change to the "SCCInfoBox" template itself. If so, that is getting in to an   area that, umm, might not be my dept.


 * Aha! That is correct. Without knowing (at all) how to read diffs of Template:Infobox wikitext edits, but with simply looking at the COMMENTS, I found a very recent edit (at the time when I saw it, it was the 3rd-most-recent edit, and the 2nd-most-recent edit said "bug fix"!) at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AInfobox_SCC&diff=481707372&oldid=481706968 ...and the "comments" there, said: << "(Make citation mandatory, full case name not)" >>.  When someone makes something mandatory, isn't there an obligation to go "fix up" all articles that "invoke" the Template being changed, in order to make sure that they comply with the new rule, which was previously "optional"?  I think there is, or there probably should be (and TJRC (talk) [see the comment above] seems to agree.)


 * IMHO, it might also be a good idea to institute an obligation to insert an an edit notice, to alert editors to the new rule which must be obeyed.


 * Meanwhile, I did ("start" to) go ahead and insert an (empty) " | citations = " field, explicitly in the wikitext of the infobox in the article, where I had noticed a problem. (Someone else beat me to it, in a photo finish;  -- ...which is good, because they knew what to do, and entered a NON-empty [more useful!] "|citations=" field!)  However, -- this still raises the question: How many   articles might there be, which now have the obligation that a certain field (the " | citations = " field) must be explicitly present in the wikitext of the infobox in the article, that did not have that obligation prior before the Template%3AInfobox_SCC edit about 3 days ago? (see the diff mentioned above) -- ?  That issue might still have to be looked in to.


 * Just my 0.02 ... Thanks! --Mike Schwartz (talk) 23:35, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

"Docket number" redirects here but the article doesn't define or explain the term
"Docket number" automatically redirects here, and the term is used in the article, but it's never actually defined. (Docket is linked to towards the end, but that article has no mention of docket numbers so it doesn't really help.) AKiwiDeerPin (talk) 17:00, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Docket number should not have been redirected here. The term is only of marginal relevance to case citations.  My guess is that the redirect was created only because some case citation systems (including the Bluebook) allow for citations to docket numbers when final pagination is not yet available.   But that's a non sequitur, like redirecting Firestone Tire to Lexus only because Lexus uses Firestone tires.   A docket number refers to an arbitrary number assigned by a court to track all filings associated with a case.   It's much more related to the concept of a docket. --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:38, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Historic Canadian cases - Style of cause
Traditionally, in Canadian case citation when the Crown was the respondent to an appeal, the style of cause was "Smith v The King [or Queen]". However, the McGill Guide and the neutral citation system that came into play around 2000 recommended that "The King" or "The Queen" always be abbreviated "R", leading to a style of cause like "Smith v R". That style of cause has been used as the name of Wikipedia articles about Canadian court decisions since then.

That new style raises an issue for some the older, historic Canadian cases, which used the older style. Many of the wikipedia articles on these cases have been re-named to use the new McGill style, but I don't think that's consistent with WP:COMMONNAME, which is based on usage, not style guides for modern cases. The older style of cause is still used in the JCPC and Supreme Court reports, and significantly, the Supreme Court cites older cases with the old style of cause. So too does the leading constitutional law text, Hogg and Wright, Constitutional Law of Canada, 5th ed.

That usage seems to me to establish that the older styles of cause are the common name for the historic old cases, and the Wikipedia articles on those cases should follow the usage in the SCRs and Hogg & Wright. For example, one of the foundational constitutional cases is Hodge v The Queen, (1883-84) 9 App Cas 117, [1883] UKPC 59. I did a search for cites to that case in the Supreme Court Reports online, and came back with 77 cites to "Hodge v The Queen", and only 1 cite to "Hodge v R" (in the case-list of one case, which tends to use abbreviations). The most recent cite to "Hodge v The Queen" was in the Greenhouse Gas References, in 2021. Hogg and Wright also use "Hodge v The Queen". There is a similar pattern for other historic cases, such as Russell v The Queen, Nadan v The King, British Coal Corp v The King, and Morgentaler v The Queen.

However, all of these cases have articles that use the "Smith v R" format: Hodge v R; Russell v R; Nadan v R; British Coal Corp v R;  Morgentaler v R.

My proposal is that for historic cases, particularly constitutional ones, the best guide to common name is how they are cited by the Supreme Court and also by leading texts like Hogg & Wright, and the article names should be changed to those names. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 16:23, 11 May 2024 (UTC)


 * This seems eminently reasonable, well thought out, and consistent with WP:COMMONNAME. I endorse this approach Kwkintegrator (talk) 16:45, 11 May 2024 (UTC)


 * WP:COMMONNAME seems to be an adequate compromise given different standards that purport to be formally correct, balanced against actual evidence of historical usage. But I note that from a formatting point of view, the most common (but not exclusive) Canadian usage is R. not R and v. not v, and so we shouldn't bake mandatory punctuation into the guideline. (See federal supreme court website: for example. Provincial/territorial courts vary: Ontario, Yukon, Alberta.) TheFeds  06:57, 16 May 2024 (UTC)