5 ms·

Which versions are these? I ask because, to lawyers, pagination matters -- a LOT. Lawyers refer to a case by the book and page number, and refer to parts of a

Which versions are these? I ask because, to lawyers, pagination matters -- a LOT. Lawyers refer to a case by the book and page number, and refer to parts of a case by the page numbers. It's probably not a great system, but the courts don't have anchors in text for better or worse. Also, what version is it as to corrections? Most courts issue typo changes after the fact. Most are minor, but a few do materially affect the meaning (such as changing the page numbers of the parts of a different case that have been overruled). Don't get me wrong, it's better than nothing, but to get any buy-in from existing lawyers these issues need to be addressed. I'm concerned that they haven't on the site.

rayiner 13y ago
> Lawyers refer to a case by the book and page number, and refer to parts of a case by the page numbers. It's probably not a great system [...] It's a fantastic system (and a wonderful demonstration of the advantages of immutable graph data structures). You can read cases from a century ago and still find every cited reference. Hyperlinking pales in comparison.
- gnu8 13y ago
  It's not really hyperlinking that fails, but the fact that web sites (the ones that don't disappear without a trace that is) don't maintain their structure over time. Many don't even attempt to provide meaningful forwards, instead just dumping you back to the front page. Microsoft and Oracle are particularly egregious offenders. What we need is a technical mechanism for embedding referenced source documents into a document, in a way that is as easy as hyperlinking to add the references and follow them. Probably also a new fair-use provision in copyright law as well.
  - wlesieutre 13y ago
    I think it's fair to say that hyperlinking fails. Sites don't maintaining their structure over time would be the cause of the failure, but the link still doesn't work... Semantics maybe, but eh. Agreed on having a way to embed documents. Especially in a way that supported some kind of signing. If I could have a reputable third party (web.archive.org or anybody else) sign an embedded snippet of a page and say "Yes, this was actually posted on X website at Y time" that would be fantastic.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- oh_sigh 13y ago
  Hyperlinks are just interactive references. Hyperlinks don't care about the nature of the reference. It is quite possible to have a hyperlink with its reference set as a book/page number.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    Indeed, Google Books actually does this.
- Crito 13y ago
  It seems to me, they solve different problems: one is about finding a document Foo, the other is about finding information in a document Foo, assuming you already have Foo. The hyperlink equivalent would be "you can find this book at this library in this town, as of the time this was written". I imagine that in real life lawyers don't need to worry about that sort of instruction because those books are printed and widely distributed across the country, while on the web documents tend to exist in only a single location, maintained by a single person or organization. USENET might be the closest on the internet we have gotten to that sort of distribution model.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Citations can refer to the document as a whole. E.g. 410 U.S. 113 (1973) refers to the case Roe v. Wade. It's equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade. 410 U.S. 113, 153 is a pin-cite to the quote "This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." It's similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Right_to_privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Right_to_privacy. The difference is that a citation is a reference to an immutable object. No matter what happens to Roe v. Wade, say it is overruled, the document at 410 U.S. 113 won't change. A URL on the other hand is a reference to a location. Like with the memory address pointed-to by a C pointer, what is at that location can change. One can imagine a system of hyperlinks that behaved differently. In this system, a URL would uniquely identify an immutable document. A new version of a document would get a new URL, and servers would be required by the protocol to preserve all previous versions of the document. This is essentially the premise of Git: every blob is stored forever and different revisions are stored as deltas such that older versions always remain accessible.
    - mietek 13y ago
      One can, and one should. We should build this system, keeping in mind the lessons of Project Xanadu. http://mesh.is/draft http://mesh.is/draft
dragonwriter 13y ago
> I ask because, to lawyers, pagination matters -- a LOT. Lawyers refer to a case by the book and page number, and refer to parts of a case by the page numbers. It's probably not a great system, but the courts don't have anchors in text for better or worse. In effect, the volumes and page numbers from the official reporter are anchors in the text -- and are stored that way in other databases (and sometimes included as textual anchors in secondary printed references.)
- slapshot 13y ago
  They are anchors of a sort, they're just inconvenient because they change from version to version and often aren't included in online versions. If a court says (in slightly more words) "pages 205 to 207 are overruled" there are often paragraphs that span from pages 204-205 and from 207-208 that are ambiguous --- and it gets even worse when a different book version is paginated so that the range above covers part of page 621 to part of page 624. Anchors on paragraphs (if not lines) would be useful.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > They are anchors of a sort, they're just inconvenient because they change from version to version and often aren't included in online versions. Most online versions I've seen do include both the citation and page numbers from the official reporters. > If a court says (in slightly more words) "pages 205 to 207 are overruled" there are often paragraphs that span from pages 204-205 and from 207-208 that are ambiguous US courts don't generally do that. They cite prior cases using page references, but they don't say "pages X-Y" are overruled. Its not a matter of more or less words, that's just not how they work at all. If they are reversing a lower court decision, they simply state that the decision is reversed (and if it is reversed in part, they describe which effects are reversed, which may not map to specific separable parts of the text). If they are stating a new legal rule overriding a prior precedent, they simply state the new legal rule. > and it gets even worse when a different book version is paginated so that the range above covers part of page 621 to part of page 624. Different books aren't the official reporter. Different books (or online sources) that are intended to be legal references will often include, as anchors in the text, the page numbers from the official reporter at the point in the text where the pages break in the official reporter. As an example in an online source, consider the Findlaw entry for The Amistad [1]. The heading includes the reference to the official reporter (40 U.S. 518) -- 518 is the page number on which the case starts in the official reporter. Throughout the text on Findlaw, you'll see blue notes like "[40 U.S. 518, 523]" -- these indicate points of page breaks in the official reporter (they follow the style of standard legal citation, so 40 U.S. 518, 523 marks the beginning point of page 523, in the case beginning at page 518, in volume 40 of the United States Reports.) [1] http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=40&invol=518 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...

rayiner 13y ago

> Lawyers refer to a case by the book and page number, and refer to parts of a case by the page numbers. It's probably not a great system [...] It's a fantastic system (and a wonderful demonstration of the advantages of immutable graph data structures). You can read cases from a century ago and still find every cited reference. Hyperlinking pales in comparison.

gnu8 13y ago
It's not really hyperlinking that fails, but the fact that web sites (the ones that don't disappear without a trace that is) don't maintain their structure over time. Many don't even attempt to provide meaningful forwards, instead just dumping you back to the front page. Microsoft and Oracle are particularly egregious offenders. What we need is a technical mechanism for embedding referenced source documents into a document, in a way that is as easy as hyperlinking to add the references and follow them. Probably also a new fair-use provision in copyright law as well.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  I think it's fair to say that hyperlinking fails. Sites don't maintaining their structure over time would be the cause of the failure, but the link still doesn't work... Semantics maybe, but eh. Agreed on having a way to embed documents. Especially in a way that supported some kind of signing. If I could have a reputable third party (web.archive.org or anybody else) sign an embedded snippet of a page and say "Yes, this was actually posted on X website at Y time" that would be fantastic.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
oh_sigh 13y ago
Hyperlinks are just interactive references. Hyperlinks don't care about the nature of the reference. It is quite possible to have a hyperlink with its reference set as a book/page number.
- saraid216 13y ago
  Indeed, Google Books actually does this.
Crito 13y ago
It seems to me, they solve different problems: one is about finding a document Foo, the other is about finding information in a document Foo, assuming you already have Foo. The hyperlink equivalent would be "you can find this book at this library in this town, as of the time this was written". I imagine that in real life lawyers don't need to worry about that sort of instruction because those books are printed and widely distributed across the country, while on the web documents tend to exist in only a single location, maintained by a single person or organization. USENET might be the closest on the internet we have gotten to that sort of distribution model.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Citations can refer to the document as a whole. E.g. 410 U.S. 113 (1973) refers to the case Roe v. Wade. It's equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade. 410 U.S. 113, 153 is a pin-cite to the quote "This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." It's similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Right_to_privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Right_to_privacy. The difference is that a citation is a reference to an immutable object. No matter what happens to Roe v. Wade, say it is overruled, the document at 410 U.S. 113 won't change. A URL on the other hand is a reference to a location. Like with the memory address pointed-to by a C pointer, what is at that location can change. One can imagine a system of hyperlinks that behaved differently. In this system, a URL would uniquely identify an immutable document. A new version of a document would get a new URL, and servers would be required by the protocol to preserve all previous versions of the document. This is essentially the premise of Git: every blob is stored forever and different revisions are stored as deltas such that older versions always remain accessible.
  - mietek 13y ago
    One can, and one should. We should build this system, keeping in mind the lessons of Project Xanadu. http://mesh.is/draft http://mesh.is/draft

dragonwriter 13y ago

> I ask because, to lawyers, pagination matters -- a LOT. Lawyers refer to a case by the book and page number, and refer to parts of a case by the page numbers. It's probably not a great system, but the courts don't have anchors in text for better or worse. In effect, the volumes and page numbers from the official reporter are anchors in the text -- and are stored that way in other databases (and sometimes included as textual anchors in secondary printed references.)

slapshot 13y ago
They are anchors of a sort, they're just inconvenient because they change from version to version and often aren't included in online versions. If a court says (in slightly more words) "pages 205 to 207 are overruled" there are often paragraphs that span from pages 204-205 and from 207-208 that are ambiguous --- and it gets even worse when a different book version is paginated so that the range above covers part of page 621 to part of page 624. Anchors on paragraphs (if not lines) would be useful.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > They are anchors of a sort, they're just inconvenient because they change from version to version and often aren't included in online versions. Most online versions I've seen do include both the citation and page numbers from the official reporters. > If a court says (in slightly more words) "pages 205 to 207 are overruled" there are often paragraphs that span from pages 204-205 and from 207-208 that are ambiguous US courts don't generally do that. They cite prior cases using page references, but they don't say "pages X-Y" are overruled. Its not a matter of more or less words, that's just not how they work at all. If they are reversing a lower court decision, they simply state that the decision is reversed (and if it is reversed in part, they describe which effects are reversed, which may not map to specific separable parts of the text). If they are stating a new legal rule overriding a prior precedent, they simply state the new legal rule. > and it gets even worse when a different book version is paginated so that the range above covers part of page 621 to part of page 624. Different books aren't the official reporter. Different books (or online sources) that are intended to be legal references will often include, as anchors in the text, the page numbers from the official reporter at the point in the text where the pages break in the official reporter. As an example in an online source, consider the Findlaw entry for The Amistad [1]. The heading includes the reference to the official reporter (40 U.S. 518) -- 518 is the page number on which the case starts in the official reporter. Throughout the text on Findlaw, you'll see blue notes like "[40 U.S. 518, 523]" -- these indicate points of page breaks in the official reporter (they follow the style of standard legal citation, so 40 U.S. 518, 523 marks the beginning point of page 523, in the case beginning at page 518, in volume 40 of the United States Reports.) [1] http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=40&invol=518 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo...