Vol. 72, No. 12, December 1999

Legal Writing

Using the New
Public Domain Citation System

Effective Jan. 1, 2000, practitioners must include the public domain citation, if it exists, when citing to cases in briefs, memoranda, and other documents submitted to the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. Here's how it works.

By Margie DeWind

Lawyers soon will confront a major change in the citation to Wisconsin appellate court opinions. Starting in January 2000, a new public domain citation will be part of all Wisconsin Supreme Court opinions and all published Wisconsin Court of Appeals opinions, as well as published court rules, orders, and other items. Like many innovations, this new cite form is intended to make work easier for people, because it will be consistent regardless of the vendor or medium. Initially, however, legal practitioners may be confused by the new cite form and unsure of how and when to use it. This article explains the public domain citation and its origins. It also describes the resources available to help lawyers and their assistants become comfortable with the new citation format.

What is the New Citation System?

The new format was adopted by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in order 95-01 (filed June 28, 1999), which repealed and recreated chapter 80 of the Supreme Court Rules, effective Jan. 1, 2000. New chapter 80 will require that practitioners include the public domain citation, if it exists, when citing to cases in briefs, memoranda, and other documents submitted to the supreme court and the court of appeals. The Wisconsin Lawyer will use the new format, as will CLE Books publications.

In addition to the case name, each Wisconsin public domain citation will consist of three elements: 1) the year; 2) the court designation; and 3) a sequential number assigned by the clerk of court's office. For Wisconsin Supreme Court cases, the year will be the year the opinion is issued, and the court designation will be WI.

Example: State v. Jones, 2000 WI 8.

In this example, the cite indicates that the Jones opinion was the eighth document issued by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the year 2000.

For Wisconsin Court of Appeals cases, the year will be the year in which the court of appeals orders the opinion to be published and the court designation will be WI App.

Example: State v. Smith, 2000 WI App 16.

In this example, the cite indicates that the Smith opinion was the sixteenth document ordered published by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in the year 2000.

Under new chapter SCR 80, the Wisconsin Reports and the Wisconsin Reporter edition of the North Western Reporter remain the official publications of the Wisconsin appellate courts' opinions, rules, and orders. Reference to the Wisconsin Reports volume and page number and the North Western Reporter volume and page number will still be required in the initial citation to an opinion, but it must follow the public domain citation.

How are Subsequent and Pinpoint Cites Handled?

For subsequent or short-form citations, reference can be made to any one or more of the three citations. Short form citations must be internally consistent. That is, the same citation must be used for all short form references in a single document.

Example (first reference): Brown v. Smith, 2000 WI 10, 250 Wis. 2d 250, 630 N.W.2d 630.

Example (subsequent reference): Brown, 2000 WI 10.

OR Brown, 250 Wis. 2d 250.

OR Brown, 630 N.W.2d 630.

Each opinion that is issued with a public domain citation will have numbered paragraphs, which will remain consistent in all publications. A pinpoint citation to an opinion issued on or after Jan. 1, 2000, must be to the appropriate paragraph number of the opinion.

Example: Brown, 2000 WI 10, ¶ 8.

If a court of appeals opinion contains a public domain citation but does not include paragraph numbers, pinpoint references should be made to page numbers. This situation may occur if a court of appeals opinion is issued before Jan. 1, 2000, and is ordered published after Jan. 1, 2000. For any opinion that contains a public domain citation and paragraph numbers, however, pinpoint references should be made to the paragraph numbers. The use of the paragraph number for pinpoint references is required even when the short form used is the Wisconsin Reports or North Western Reporter citation. Both publications are required by new chapter 80 to include the paragraph numbers with opinions that contain public domain citations.

Example: Brown, 250 Wis. 2d 250, ¶ 12.

The user should note that the court designations in the public domain citation do not carry punctuation, whereas the reporter abbreviations in cites to the official publications do. Also, cases cited using the new form required by chapter SCR 80 should not contain a court and year parenthetical, because the public domain citation will convey this information to the reader.

The traditional method of citing to Wisconsin cases will not change for supreme court opinions issued before Jan. 1, 2000, or for court of appeals opinions ordered to be published before that date. References to such opinions will continue to include the Wisconsin Reports volume and page number, the North Western Reporter volume and page number, page number pinpoints, if any, and the court and year in a parenthetical.

What About Citing to Other Sources?

Methods of citing to other sources of law, such as non-Wisconsin and federal cases, and state and federal legislative and administrative materials, are not affected by the new supreme court rule. Though the supreme court has the power to set all citation requirements,¹ the court has created its own rules only for citing to Wisconsin opinions. Under section 809.19(1)(e) of the Wisconsin Statutes, a court-created rule, citations in briefs submitted to the appellate courts are required to conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation and to Supreme Court Rule 80.02. Because rule 80.02 deals only with citations to published Wisconsin appellate opinions, the Bluebook remains the primary source for rules on citing other legal and nonlegal materials.

Though the theoretical division of citation authority between the Bluebook and Supreme Court Rule 80.02 is clear, determining how to cite particular resources in practice can be confusing. For example, for many years, Wisconsin's style of citing to statutes deviated from the Bluebook rule.² The Wisconsin Supreme Court now follows the Bluebook rule, but it has never formally repudiated its earlier decree that a different format be used. In addition, some Bluebook rules are vague, while others threaten to overwhelm the user with unnecessary detail. In yet other instances, Bluebook rules, while clear, do not serve their intended function of ensuring that citations contain the most useful information about an authority.

What Citation Resources are Available?

The State Bar CLE Books Department has attempted to eliminate citation confusion with its recently updated Wisconsin Guide to Citation, a handbook that gives examples of citation forms for the authorities most likely to be cited by Wisconsin practitioners. The Wisconsin Guide to Citation concisely illustrates how to apply the citation rules of the supreme court and the Bluebook.

Wisconsin's new public domain citation format is modeled on a format developed by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), which devised universal citation rules for cases, statutes, and administrative regulations. The AALL's goal was to encourage jurisdictions nationwide to adopt vendor- and medium-neutral citation systems. (A vendor-neutral system is independent of any one commercial provider of case law. A medium-neutral system works equally well in all media.) The AALL, in turn, relied heavily upon work done by the State Bar's Technology Resource Committee, an early leader in the movement to develop neutral citation formats.

The universal citation rules appear in the Universal Citation Guide, an AALL publication available from the State Bar. Supreme Court Rule 80.02 incorporates many aspects of the Universal Citation Guide's rules for citing to cases. While rule 80.02 mirrors the Universal Citation Guide's dictates on court designations and opinion and paragraph numbers, it deviates from the Universal Citation Guide in requiring that parallel citations (to the Wisconsin and North Western reporters) be maintained. The Universal Citation Guide also contains a provision covering citation to unpublished decisions. Supreme Court Rule 80.02 does not require that unpublished decisions be given public domain citations, presumably because such decisions have no precedential value and thus may not be cited as precedent or authority in Wisconsin.³

The Universal Citation Guide also presents the rules developed by the AALL for citing to statutes and administrative regulations. While these discussions contain useful background information, they are not directly relevant to Wisconsin practitioners. The Bluebook, which continues to be the authority in Wisconsin for citing to statutes and administrative materials, has as yet not incorporated the universal citation rules.

Conclusion

Using the new public domain citation will pose some challenges over the coming months. Nevertheless, lawyers who pay careful attention to the supreme court rule and other Wisconsin resources should be able to quickly accustom themselves to this new citation convention.

Endnotes

¹ Wis. Stat. § 751.12 (the court "shall ... regulate pleading, practice and procedure in judicial proceedings in all courts").

²See Notice to Members of the Bar, 74 Wis. 2d xxxix (1976).

³ Wis. Stat. § 809.23(3).

Margie DeWind, U.W. 1989, is a legal editor with the State Bar CLE Books Department.