Bulletin #3
Canadian Ad hoc Committee for the development of
a neutral citation standard
Hello everyone,
Here's a summary of our first conference call for
the record and those who couldn't make it.
The agenda for discussion was :
1- Accepting the working draft for public release.
2- Agreeing on a work schedule for the coming period.
3- Varia : opening up the Committee for broader representation.
1- Every participant not involved in preparing the draft
found it well structured and very thorough. All agreed
on its public release.
Action : the draft's status on the Web page has been
upgraded by deletion of the mention "for approval
by the Committee..."; the Web page has been
linked from the CRDP's home page. It will also
be publicized by various means to attract a
wide audience.
2- The work schedule was approved. The next call will thus
be at 13h00, Montreal time, on May 27, also a Wednesday.
The main topic will be sections 1 and 2 of the draft,
Objectives and Architecture.
3- All agreed on opening up the Committee to make it more
representative, both geographically and across canadian
circles interested in case law citation.
More specifically, we would like someone from the court
system of Ontario, have someone in view in British Columbia
and Alberta and will talk to the ACCA. We'll also try
for someone from the courts in the Maritimes. This
recruitment process will also give visibility to the
Committee among court systems of various provinces. This
visibility is important in preventing anyone from going
on a tangent of their own in terms of a neutral citation.
Two other topics were brought up. First is the
updating of the Canadian Judicial Council Standards for
the Preparation, Distribution and Citation of Canadian
Judgements in Electronic Form. Obviously it will be needed
for its citation part when our standard is established.
There might be other aspects of it that will also need to
be revised. Since most of the members of the Judges Computer
Advisory Committee that drew it are now on our Committee
or will be invited to join, the two Committee might soon
become one and the same. This will also give increased
credibility to our current endeavour.
The second point is the possible need for an
overseeing body for the implementation of the standard,
especially the tribunal designation aspect. It was pointed
out that this is a delicate matter, as its authority might
be resisted in some quarters. The JCAC might just be well
accepted enough to pull it, though. One aspect of the
standard is that it can be implemented in a decentralized
fashion, for that type of reason. The CLIC (Canadian Legal
Information Centre) was well regarded and there might be
a need for such a body in the coming period. This matter
will have to be looked at again.
Finally, to foster a larger consultation process
starting very soon, we will add a "comments" link to the
web page and people will also be able to subscribe to the
citation list if they want to intervene more actively.
The conferences calls will remain for the Committee's work.
An alternative would be setting up a second, public list,
but that would mean extra work, mostly duplication, and be
counterproductive in the end.
That's it as far as I can see. If something is
missing from this report, let me know and I'll make the
correction before the next conference call so we're all
agreed by then.
It's a long week-end starting in a few minutes.
Looks like we're in for nice weather in the Montreal
area. Wish the same to you all.
Regards.
Guy
--
Guy Huard huard@crdp.umontreal.ca
Editeur LexUM
Centre de Recherche en Droit Public
Universite de Montreal
http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/
Tel: +1 (514) 343-7853
Fax: +1 (514) 343-7508