Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/390

 The

Green

Bag

Published Monthly at $4.00 per Annum. Single Numbers 50 Cents. Communications in regard to the contents of the Magazine should be addressed to the Editor, S. R. Wrightington, 31 State Street, Boston, Mass. The Editor will be glad to receive contributions of articles of moderate length upon subjects of interest to the profession; also anything in the way of legal antiquities, facetim, and anecdotes. CITATION OF OPINIONS

were collected in the edition of " Federal Cases," and proved entirely satisfactory. Another advantage would be that the per manent citation of a case could be ascertained the moment it is rendered, and thus a text book giving the most recent decisions before going to press, would cite them in a final form. The suggestion, we understand, does not con template the abandonment of the addition of the names of the parties, which in itself is a valuable means of remembering and identifying for purposes of discussion, the leading cases on a particular subject. It would simply render more uniform the system of reference by which a particular case may be found in print. There seems to be no difficulty whatever involved in the adoption of the suggestion, with reference to future cases, but the difficulties involved in obtaining a general agreement on such a policy are probably too great to be overcome by any interest which is likely to be aroused by the suggestion. It is likely also that the con flicting interests of law publishers would lead them to discourage any such reform. The suggestion, however, is an interesting one and deserves further discussion.

Every intelligent suggestion which may lead to a reduction in the labor of citation of the ever-growing mass of case law deserves careful study, and when such a suggestion comes from a man who has devoted his life to the publication of law reports and legal text books it brings to the discussion a point of view which, with all due allowance for the possible self-interest of the publisher, ought to have merits in practical application, which would be productive of valuable results. Mr. John B. West, the well-known publisher of St. Paul, in a recent issue of Current Law (Vol. vi, No. 4) publishes a brief monograph en titled " Universal Citations for All Opinions." He calls attention to the necessary multipli cation of citations caused by the different unofficial publications of reports, which have become so valuable an addition to our law libraries that publishers find it necessary to add to the references to the official state reports the volume and page references to these private publications. In the production of a work of any magnitude the space required by these additional citations is surprisingly large. " After many years of experience as a publisher, the writer has reached the con ILLINOIS STATE BAR ASSOCIATION clusion that this difficulty, like many others, The executive committee of the Illinois arises out of complexity and artificiality, and may be solved by a return to simplicity of State Bar Association announce that its annual meeting will be held at Galesburgh, methods." He contends that reports of de July if and 12, and that the principal ad cisions are simply official documents which should be filed in numerical order and cited dress will be delivered by Hon. Edward M. with reference to their numbers. Under this Shephard of New York. The principal subject for discussion by the association will be system no matter how many decisions or sys tems of reporting be adopted each case can be " Railroad Rate Regulation," which will be readily found and cited by reference to this led by James H. Wilkerson of Chicago. official number, entirely regardless of the PUNISHMENT FOR BUSINESS FRAUDS volume and page of the particular publica tion. This method was adopted when the Interesting suggestions for criminal law early decisions of the lower federal courts reform are made by District Attorney Arthur