In 1999, the American Association of Law Libraries published the Universal Citation Guide, which contains recommendations for universal citation rules for judicial decisions, statutes and administrative regulations. One major goal of the guide is to create a consistent citation system for both print and electronically published sources of law, and which does not therefore depend upon the particular pagination of the publication containing the document in order to provide accurate pinpoint citations.
Five elements would comprise the citation of a judicial decision: case name, year, court, opinion number, paragraph number. Thus, a typical case might be cited as Winberry v. Salisbury, 1950 NJ 31, ¶24, rather than the current Winberry v. Salisbury, 5 N.J. 240, 255, 74 A.2d 406 414 (1950) (“rule-making power of the Supreme Court is not subject to overriding legislation”). The advantage of the system is that the proper citation is not dependent upon the source of publication, and would remain consistent regardless of whether the citer procured the case from a printed reporter volume, a website or a computerized legal information retrieval system.
