Golden Rule of Legal Writing: Never, ever cite to anything you haven’t read carefully.
There is a reason law librarians try to drill that rule into the heads of lawyers and law students (and journalists):
“Is it a “Good” Case? Can You Rely on BCite, KeyCite, and Shepard’s to Tell You?,” by Kristina Niedringhaus, JOTWELL (April 22, 2019) (reviewing Paul Hellyer, Evaluating Shepard’s, KeyCite, and BCite for Case Validation Accuracy, 110 Law Libr. J. 449 (2018)).
Without access to a library that subscribes to a Congressional documents database (or that has retained the print), you will have a devil of a time finding many Congressional documents, especially those before the 94th Congress (1975-76) or after 1865. (See the LOC Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation, the National Archives, or the GPO Congressional Documents database.)
You might want to try Congress dot gov, where you’ll find bills and resolutions and, hmmm – no reports.
Let’s say you want to find this document, which is a “report.”
You may or may not use a serial comma wherever (or nowhere) else you want, but woe to the person who leaves the serial comma out of legal documents, including contracts, legal opinions, statutes, regulations, and any other legal agreement or law that will be interpreted literally (and I mean literally, literally) by parties to the agreement or by a judge – or even, mercy, by a legislator or government lawyer.
Honestly now: Do you really want to pay lawyer(s!) bills and court costs when lawyers, judges, and clients end up doing battle over the meaning of a sentence when the presence of a comma would have allowed everyone to go home to supper and a peaceful night’s sleep?
Lawyers, legislators, drafters of laws, and judges have enough trouble writing clearly without adding to their own and their readers’ woes. Use the serial comma, please. It will save all of us time and money.
Hilarious April 2019 story out of England, via the BBC:
Judge asked to be relieved of jury duty – because he was the judge in the case.
But it gets worse! The Jury Central Summoning Bureau first told him, no, you’ll have to serve. Ha ha ha. Read the story:
Library school student, librarian, and other information professional survey makers: this post is for you.
Most of us want to help you out, especially if your survey results may help us out, but even if it’s just to support a student or a colleague.
We’re happy to take your survey … IF you follow some basic rules, which most of you never do:
Oregon Legal Research Blog