Run, don't walk, to read Justice Raphael's great piece in today's DJ about footnoted citations:
Justices and their citations
Can you imagine if the text of a U.S. Supreme Court opinion had
no citations at all?
You
actually don't have to imagine -- you can look at Justice Neil Gorsuch's April
20 lead opinion in Ramos v. Louisiana, 2020 DJDAR
3504.
...
For about a quarter century, legal writing guru and current
Black's Law Dictionary editor-in-chief Bryan A. Garner has been advocating for
placing citations in footnotes. Two days after Ramos, Garner devoted the
regular broadcast on his twitter feed to a 21-minute video in which he defends
Gorsuch's style decision. (If you are interested in this matter, watching this
engaging video is well worth your time.)
...
At the end of the day, it is only our legal culture's familiarity with its citation practice that shapes our citation rules and preferences. The High Court of Australia footnotes all its citations as Gorsuch did in Ramos, consistent with that country's citation style guides. If Gorsuch is changing our highest court's practice to allow footnoted citations, it could augur more welcoming for that approach elsewhere.
{On this same topic see the Appellate Advocacy's Blog post
here.}
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