Copy any of the cited passages alone, from Bloomberg Law, Fastcase, Lexis, or Westlaw and the citation or reference that accompanies it will contain only the section or rule number. A researcher drawing crucial language of any of those provisions from a non-commercial online source will either copy the entire section or rule or, presumably, know that a copied sentence or two must be accompanied by a full designation reaching all the way down to the subsection, paragraph, or subparagraph level. A full citation to a key passage must specify its exact location within that structure. The copied material may lie deep within a nested framework of numbered or lettered subsections and paragraphs. To begin where that prior review ended, citations to highly structured documents like statutes, regulations, and court rules commonly require more than the section or rule number. Incomplete Citations Codified Material (Statutes, Regulations, Court Rules) - A Consistent Failure Six years on, the gap between promise and performance of the “copy with reference” feature of these systems has not diminished. In any setting where citation format is critical, users need to know that. And all researchers need to be aware that the citations of statutes or regulations these systems generate will often be seriously incomplete. A 2014 review in this blog of the citations delivered by the major online research services along with copied blocks of text concluded:Īt their current stage of evolution none of the major research services (including not only Westlaw and Lexis, but Bloomberg Law, Fastcase, and Casemaker) can be relied upon to produce primary law citations that fully comply with The Bluebook or, indeed, any of the other citation styles they may list.
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