McGill Guide - the new citation rules

A former Field summer student wrote this on my Facebook Wall:

"I read your post on Slaw, but I can't tell: what do you think of the new McGill changes? Are they retroactive-- should we cite old cases with the new style? Won't that make it difficult or impossible to do effective Westlaw citation searches? Do we *have* to follow the dumb 'no periods!' suggestion despite it being totally ridiculous? I've noticed the new AB courts judgments haven't changed their style. If the SCC doesn't start using the new guide suggestions (esp. the periods thing) in the upcoming term, does that mean I can ignore it? Plus, you're right about persistent URLs. The McGill guide editors have apparently never looked up anything. That's like citing an article title and then, instead of the publication name, just writing ": Books."

This is such a good topic for discussion that I had to respond with a blog post.

Ted Tjaden wrote a great example for case citation in an earlier Slaw post:

• Former: Gould Estate v. Stoddart Publishing Co. (1998), 39 O.R. (3d) 545 (C.A.)
• New 7th edition: Gould Estate v Stoddart Publishing Co (1998), 39 OR (3d) 545 (CA) [i.e., no periods after the "v" or after "Co" or for the abbreviations for the Ontario Reports Court of Appeal]

My friends comments are exceptionally relevant. If we are sending off a case to the SCC today (notice no periods in the court abbreviation :-) how do we cite cases?

The McGill Guide is officially adopted by a long list of journals, including the Alberta Law Review. It is only officially adopted by the following courts:

• CA for NB
• CA for Saskatchewan
• QB of Saskatchewan
• SC of the Yukon Territory

For the Supreme Court of Canada, the SCC Rules say nothing regarding citation in the section about books of authorities. Neither do the Alberta Courts discuss specifics of citation in their practice notes.

The Canadian Judicial Council does have a Canadian Citation Committee. In 2009, this body created a standards document titled The Preparation, Citation and Distribution of Canadian Decisions. The references to citation in this document are to the Neutral Citation Standard. There is no punctuation in a neutral citation. This document supercedes the Neutral Citation Standard, but more information on Neutral Citation, now adopted by all Canadian Courts, is available here http://www.lexum.com/ccc-ccr/neutr/index_en.html

The Canadian Citation Committee has not specifically adopted anything from the latest McGill Guide. Their reference to case citation is described as:

4.3 Citation to Case law
[61] When citing a case, include its neutral citation, if it has one. If you add parallel citations place them after the neutral citation, which should immediately follow the case name.
Example
Smith v. Jones, 2006 NBQB 435, 87 D.L.R. (4th) 334, [2006] N.B.J. No. 198 (QL).
[62] Add pinpoint references to paragraph numbers where available, preceded by "at para." or "at paras."
Example
Smith v. Jones, 2006 NBQB 435 at paras. 34 and 36-39.

On another note, if you ever wondered how cases are named, here is the guide.

So, to sum up.

• You MUST use the new McGill guide to cite materials to journals listed in the "adopted by" list in the guide including the Alberta Law Review.
• You MUST include a Neutral Citation at least as a parallel citation when submitting something to the courts.
• Until the Canadian Judicial Council's Canadian Citation Committee says otherwise, I would cite cases as they do when they write judgments.

Finally, in the immortal words of Tony Fell, my cataloging instructor at Grant MacEwan University:

It is better to be consistent than correct.

Cross posted to Slaw.ca