More on McGill Guide to Legal Citation

This is a follow-up to the August 23, 2010 post entitled Changes to McGill Guide to Legal Citation.

Today on Slaw.ca, John Davis of Osgoode Hall Law School dives into the debate about the changes to what is often considered the Canadian "Bible" of legal citation:

"What peeves me most is that the Guide still seems to assume that the printed page is the most important (if not the only) place where sources, electronic or otherwise, will be cited. It’s not. We’ve had the web and practical hyperlinking for twenty years now, for heaven’s sake. (Isn’t heaven where all the clouds are?) Editors and authors should be thinking 'web' as much as 'print' by now."

"People who know me understand that I live my life surrounded by bound printed pages. I love the things. I have thousands of them, and I’m still buying more. Occasionally, I still even download something (copyright permitting, of course) and have the printouts bound. When I’m reading microfilm (which I do a lot), I still tend to use a pen, a notebook, and cursive script. But more and more of what I now write, even just research notes for myself, I write first and foremost for the web (...)"

"The simple fact is that, for most practical purposes, the hyperlink is now the better way to cite. Who can seriously dispute that? How often do those of us staring at a convenient link to Wexis or Hein now go to the library stacks instead to read that article from the McGill Law Journal–or should I have written 'McGill L J'?"

In the first paragraph of his article, Davis links to 4 earlier Slaw.ca articles on the new 7th edition of the McGill Guide, 3 of which I had missed.