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19 Can. L. Libr. 81 (1994)
Legal Citation Practice in Canada: Uniform or Uninformed

handle is hein.journals/callb19 and id is 93 raw text is: LEGAL CITATION PRACTICE IN CANADA: UNIFORM OR UNINFORMED' Louis Mirando L'auteur fournit un bref historique du syst~me de r~frence juridique, puis il tente d'identifier les principes qui sous-tendent un mode de r~f~rence uniforme. Le Manuel canadien derfrencejuridiquede l'Universit6 McGill, qui est devenu le module standard utilis6 au Canada, est 6valu6 en marge de ces constatations. L'auteur conclut que la pratique courante devrait 6tre r6examin~e. Almost as long as laws have been written, legal citations have been used to refer to them. In our western legal tradition, it is specifically the written law (lex) which is referred to, for only the written word is binding (ligere = to bind, oblige; obligation). An early example is an inscription by the Roman emperor Vespasian in A.D. 79 referring to a bronze tablet quae fixa est Romae in Capitolio ad aram gentis Iuliae, de foras podio sinisteriore, tab. I pag. II loc. XXXIII1 (which is posted on the Capitol in Rome at the altar of the Julian clan, outside to the left of the podium, tablet 1, page 2, division 33). This graphic reference to the exact textual location of the specific law referred to is almost modern in the logical progression of its bibliographical attributes, from largest to smallest unit. After the cosmopolitan Normans conquered England in By Louis Mirando2 1066, it was only a matter of time before the English common law tradition adopted some of the scholarly and glossarial conventions which flourished in Europe with the revival of the study of Roman law (specifically, the discovery of a manuscript of Justinian's Digest in 1076) in the canon and civil law schools of the continental universities. The citation methods devel- oped by this code-based tradition would have been well known to any English legal scholar. However, England would never forgo its common law system based on judicial prec- edent and parliamentary statute. In the late fourteenth cen- tury, in the General Prologue to his Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer described one of the pilgrims, the Man of Lawe: In termes had he caas and doomes alle That from the tyme of kyng William were falle. And every statut koude he pleyne by rote. (General Prologue 1:323-324,327) (He could recite all the cases and judgments from the time of King William ... And he knew every statute completely by heart.) Seemingly, the early English Man of Lawe (a literary, not a sexist reference) had little need for legal citation. As time went on and the number of cases and statutes increased, a first-hand familiarity with all the sources of our law became an impossibility. Yet the situation changed again radically with the invention of printing. By the late sixteenth century, access to the corpus of English law, previously avail- able only in manuscript plea rolls and YearBooks, was no longer dependent on one's proximity to the records kept at Westmin- ster. Though the printing of cases and statutes was a strictly controlled monopoly granted by royal patent, the body of reported law increased and improved in quality. The early printers (especially Richard Tottell, who held the royal patent from 1553 to 1593) developed the first English legal reference works, and the use of a legal citation system became an imperative. However, unlike the sources of Roman civil law, which were monographic, the primary sources of English law were serial and ever-changing. Consequently, the English law printers also developed a system of citation peculiar to English law. The system they used is essentially the same system of legal citation we are using throughout the Anglo- American legal community today. The standard for legal citation as it is currently practised in Canada is set by the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, compiled by the editors of the McGill Law Journal.' It is I Received May 17, 1994; Accepted for publication June 6, 1994. 2 Louis Mirando is Manager, Library Services, Tory, Tory, Deslauriers & Binnington. 1994 Canadian Law Libraries/Biblioth~ques de droit canadiennes, Vol. 19, No. 3 81

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