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A note on the importance of brevity.
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Another aspect of legal citation that is equally critical is being concise. One needs to understand the importance of eliminating those pieces of information that are not necessary.
Peter Martin, in his work Introduction to Basic Legal Citation offers a superb explanation of this principle. "Legal citation," he explains, is a sort of "standard language” that obliges the writer to be concise for sound reasons: Because writing by lawyers and judges is so dependent on [citations], [legal citation] is a language of abbreviations and special terms. This encryption . . . produces a dramatic reduction in the space consumed by references. As you become an experienced reader of law writing you will learn to follow a line of argument straight through the many citations that lace it. Even so citations are a distraction until the reader wishes to follow one. The fundamental trade-off that underlies any citation scheme is a trade-off between providing full information about the referenced work and keeping the text as uncluttered as possible. Standard abbreviations and codes help achieve a reasonable compromise of these competing interests.Martin’s illustrates his point by showing us the caption for the full text of a supreme court case retrieved on LEXIS:
Were a writer to include all the information in this caption in a citation, Martin tells us, the brief or article would, with only a few citations, become virtually unreadable. The critical components of a case citation (Case name, volume, Reporter, 1st page, and year of decision) are all that is necessary for a reader to relocate this resource. In keeping with this primary purpose of citations, a reference to this decision, then, in the “language” of legal citation, becomes, simply: Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989).In this citation, the basic components necessary for a reader to relocate this source work are presented with an economy of space and a minimum of distraction to the reader. Abbreviations are used for reporter names, and information regarding the decision that are not pertinent to the discussion in the piece are eliminated. The prior history, for instance, does not need to be included in the citation, unless the discussion specifically refers to the earlier decision affirmed by the court. 2 Citations of other types of source works, as well, require that one become familiar with the basic components for a proper citation. These components are defined in detail in the StyleGuide, Field Definitions section of legalcitation.net.
2. Peter Martin, Introduction to Basic Legal Citation
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