The Catchline. President s Message CONTENTS

Transcription

1 The Catchline BULLETIN OF THE ASSOCIATION OF REPORTERS OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS VOLUME XXXI, NO. 3 NOV.-DEC President s Message Our 31 st annual meeting in Chicago was a resounding success thanks to the hard work of Danilo Anselmo, Kevin Loftus, Bill Hooks, all our speakers, and myself (does that sound too self-congratulatory? Oh well!). I hope everyone had as enjoyable a time as I did, catching up with old friends and making new ones. I trust that our meeting in DC next summer, July 31 through August 5, 2013, will be just as enjoyable and that I will see you all there! Our business meetings focused on the ARJD s finances and prospects for remaining a fiscally sustaining organization. There are many facets to this issue, from the income generated by membership and registration fees to the costs associated with the annual meetings. The Executive Board was granted approval to consider changing the registration fees as well as the length of time over which the annual meetings are held. We know the economy makes the choice to attend the annual meeting ever more difficult for Reporters who have to pay out of pocket, and the Board is mindful of the fixed incomes that retirees live on, but there must be some changes to ensure that the ARJD continues to thrive in future years. As always, all members are welcome to attend the Executive Board meetings held at the US Supreme Court in DC, in person or by telephone. I also welcome comments sent to me via , which I ll include in the discussion. The Fall board meeting was held on November 16, 2012, where we discussed changes to the cost and timing of the annual meetings. We also moved forward with decisions regarding the 2014 meeting in Denver. After an enjoyable Wednesday night dinner at Rosebud Steakhouse, our meeting began on Thursday with a welcome from President Danilo Anselmo and a fascinating presentation from Richard Leiter about his Leading Cases Information Retrieval Project. Michele Timmons then gave us an in-depth understanding of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act. Following lunch a roundtable discussion of how reporters actually report decisions was held, enlightening all of us on the differences between various reporters offices in the US and Canada. My warmest thanks go to John Juroszek, Bill Hooks, and Chantal Demers for participating in the roundtable. Thursday evening Thompson Reuters West outdid themselves once again with a lovely boat cruise and delicious dinner, allowing us the chance to see Chicago from a different perspective. Friday s panel discussion on electronic opinions was extremely informative, not just for our members but for the panelists as well, from what I was told! The chair, Susan Williams from Arkansas, led off with a refresher on Arkansas experience with online reporting and then panelists Brenda Castello from New Mexico, Dan Cordova from Colorado, Geri Amparo Cepeda from Guam, and Keith Ann Stiverson from the Chicago-Kent College of Law library filled us in on their perspectives and experiences. An afternoon outing to the Seventh Circuit to listen to a talk by Judge Richard Posner led to a lengthy visit with him and his law clerks in his chambers, causing some of us to race to get to buses in time for LexisNexis wonderful evening at Adobo Grill and Second City! Saturday morning found us enthralled with Bill Bernhardt s tips on legal writing and editing. I m not sure how many of us were up for pop quizzes at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning, however, especially those of us who had stayed up late at the West suite singing theme songs from old TV shows! A final roundtable on the role of reporters in adapting to new technology gave us food for thought on how to handle our responsibilities to current Justices and future lawyers. My warmest thanks to David Power and Ralph Preston for leading the discussion. Saturday night was rounded out with a rainy Gangster bus tour and delicious meat-filled dinner at ZED451. Chicago treated us well this past August, and I hope that DC will also be the source of great memories and learning experiences next year. LEAH WALKER ARJD President CONTENTS Page President s Message... 1 Chicago Meeting Recap Committee Reports... 4 Cornell LVI2012 Conference... 4 Publication in the Digital Age... 5 Verdery Knights - In Appreciation... 6 Chris Fallon - 1 st Woman Reporter at SCUS... 6 Chicago 2012 Conference Photos

2 The educational programs and business meetings held at the ARJD s annual meeting in Chicago last summer included a number of topics and developments important to members. Thursday, August 2 President Dan Anselmo opened the morning session with an introduction to the host city. Professor Richard Leiter, Director of the Schmid Law Library and Professor of Law, University of Nebraska College of Law, spoke about his Leading Cases Information Retrieval Project. The Professor s premise is that the large volume of published case law impedes efficient and effective research on the leading cases in particular areas of the law. His Project proposes to facilitate such research by identifying cases cited in law review articles in those areas on the theory that the articles authors have already identified the leading cases. Using an algorithm still under development, a computer program will enable a researcher to quickly locate all the leading cases for a given topic, eliminating the incomplete and hardto-navigate results of computer searches that currently are the norm. Michelle Timmons, Chair of the Drafting Committee for the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA), addressed the drafting process and primary considerations of the Committee, which resulted in the adoption of UELMA by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in August Given the increasing presence of online only law (in the form of statutes, judicial decisions, administrative rules, etc.), the Committee was tasked with drafting an Act that would ensure the same level of trustworthiness in online law as that traditionally placed in print law. To date, UELMA has been introduced to legislatures in five states, but enacted only in Colorado and California. The primary focus of the Act is to prescribe uniform standards for authentication, preservation, and public accessibility of online law that has been designated official. If a state preserves legal material electronically, it must provide for back-up and recovery, and it must ensure the integrity and continued usability of the material. Online only jurisdictions to date have employed various means to provide authentication, including Adobe documents with special banners, digital signatures and watermarks, and hash algorithms. The cost of the different methods varies. Under UELMA, the presence of authentication creates a rebuttable presumption of accuracy in states that have adopted the Act. Acceptable preservation methods have not developed as rapidly as authentication methods. Uncertainty about future capability to read archival documents as technology advances has been the primary hurdle. Print is still a very good method of preservation and will likely remain essential for preservation into the foreseeable future. Thursday afternoon began with a roundtable discussion by ARJD members Chantal Demers, Legal Counsel for the Supreme Court of Canada; John Juroszek, Reporter of Decisions for the Supreme Court of Michigan; and Bill Hooks, the New York State Reporter. Panel members described the processes and procedures for officially reporting court decisions that are specific to their jurisdictions. Similarities and differences in the publication and editorial processes of the three jurisdictions were noted. All three stressed close attention to detail. Michigan does not apply a preferred style to decisions, but New Chicago Meeting Recap 2 York follows its own Official Style Manual in styling opinions. In the case of Canada, a house style is applied but Judges, many of whom have personal preferences, have the final say. All three panelists exercise freedom in notifying courts of potential substantive errors. However, Michigan exercises greater discretion in suggesting changes of format and language, even in the absence of apparent error. Canada has unique challenges in translating its reports for both French- and English-speaking users. Common to all was the goal of achieving accuracy with regard to statements of fact and citations in opinions. The afternoon concluded with a business meeting during which: Dan Anselmo presented plaques recognizing the long and valued service of Cliff Allen as head of the Education Committee and Tim Fuller as Treasurer of the ARJD; Dan delivered the Treasurer s report, noting that the ARJD s bank balance was approximately $18,000 before payment of expenses for the 2012 Conference; ARJD Vice-President Leah Walker requested member suggestions for guest speakers for future conferences and volunteers for the Education Committee, and Cliff agreed to resume his role with the Committee; Dan noted improved communications provided by the Communications Committee during ; Leah Walker, who will be the ARJD President and chair of the Annual Meeting Committee, requested input from members on potential activities for the 2013 Washington, DC annual meeting; and Secretary Bill Hooks, on behalf of the Executive Board, proposed Nashville, TN, as the 2014 annual meeting site; Andy Ashe spoke in favor of Denver, CO; and Lloyd Hysan spoke in favor of a resort-type setting. Friday, August 3 The morning session opened with a panel discussion on electronic decisions, which was chaired by Susan Williams, Reporter of Decisions for the Supreme Court of Arkansas, and included Brenda Castello, Executive Director of the New Mexico Compilation Commission; Geraldine Amparo Cepeda, Compiler of Laws for the Supreme Court of Guam; Dan Cordova, Librarian for the Supreme Court of Colorado; and Keith Ann Stiverson, Director of the Chicago-Kent College of Law Library. The following points of interest where raised during the session: All of the represented jurisdictions have transitioned away from law books to the electronic publication of their official decisions because of considerations ranging from costs to the greater accessibility of electronic opinions. No jurisdiction reported bench or bar dissatisfaction with the electronic versions. All have adopted some form of vendor-neutral citations. Colorado has adopted UELMA. Some jurisdictions link case, statute, and rule citations within decisions. A newer version of Adobe permits hyperlinking within PDF documents. Retrobuilds to provide coverage of archival decisions are contemplated if not already under construction. New Mexico provides a free public access database, excluding copyrighted materials, and a fee-based database with (continued on page 3)

3 Chicago Meeting ReCap (Continued from Pg. 2) copyrighted annotations for the bar and other interested parties. Revenue generated by the fee-based database helps underwrite the electronic publication initiative. Arkansas and Guam do not provide a syllabus or headnotes. New Mexico and Colorado maintain limited print versions for preservation purposes. The morning session concluded with a business meeting, at which: By a unanimous vote, the membership chose Denver, CO as the site for the 2014 annual meeting and Nashville, TN as the site for 2015; The Executive Board noted the ongoing depletion of the ARJD treasury to cover the costs of annual meetings which are not covered by registration fees and stated its recommendation that retiree and guest fees be raised, as needed, in the future to avoid ultimate bankruptcy; Members acknowledged the need for future increases in fees, but suggested ways that increases could be minimized by: making adjustments to paid meals and speakers; soliciting more vendors to help underwrite meeting costs; coordinating ARJD meetings with those of court clerks or other judicial branch organizations; organizing a third law reporting symposium that would include CLE credit; and finally, selecting cheaper hotels. Friday afternoon included a tour of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and a lecture by Judge Richard Posner. Judge Posner shared his thoughts on official reporting, style and publication of decisions, and judicial writing. He concludes that official reporting is costly, slows publication, and is generally unnecessary. However, he does find value in the syllabuses prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the U.S. Supreme Court. He professes little knowledge of official state reporters, has little use for style manuals, and considers the Blue Book a monstrosity. He provides his clerks with a three-page style guide that he composed. He supports publication of opinions that are useable as precedent, but finds no value in wholesale publication, citing West s Federal Appendix as an example of decisions that shouldn t be published. Judge Posner finds judicial writing on the whole to be really awful and favors the use of photographs rather than language to describe or contrast physical items. Saturday, August 4 Saturday morning opened with William Bernhardt, an attorney and author of best-selling novels featuring Oklahoma defense attorney Ben Kincaid. His work also includes putting on continuing legal education programs on writing for lawyers. Mr. Bernhardt spoke on the value, importance, and impact of writing, citing the influence of Thoreau on Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He recognized the important role of Reporters of Decisions in disseminating the writings of courts. Noting that in any context, writing matters, he specifically referenced the Reporters drafting of syllabuses and headnotes. Mr. Bernhardt encourages plain, clear writing. He subscribes to a descriptive approach that emphasizes the best way to say what I want to say, rather than a prescriptive approach that focuses on studiously following rules of grammar. He discussed several grammar myths that have achieved the status of rules but do not improve the quality of writing. These include the common proscriptions of starting a sentence with a coordinating conjunction like and, yet, or but ; splitting infinitives; starting a sentence with because ; ending a sentence with a preposition; and using double negatives. He is a staunch supporter of using the Oxford comma to separate all items in a list of three or more, recommends short sentences, and strongly discourages the use of degree adverbs such as clearly, quite, and very. The morning concluded with a roundtable discussion of the role of Reporters in adapting to new technology. The participants were David Power, the Chief Law Editor of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Ralph Preston, the recently retired Reporter of Decisions of the Ohio Supreme Court. David spoke of the importance of Reporters remaining relevant in the face of technological advances. He believes that Reporters should seek ways to bring additional value to the decisions they report and that they should be proactive in bringing technology to their judges. Ralph placed the Reporter in context as the only person within a court system who is concerned with the preservation and accessibility of decisions and who understands the challenges and ramifications presented by technological change on the reporting of decisions. Individual judges may be facile with technology, but courts collectively lack understanding of the big picture presented by technology. Reporters must be assertive in painting the big picture for their courts. David agreed to provide the URL for a document prepared by the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) pertaining to the preparation of judgments and incorporating many elements facilitating the electronic publication thereof. A link to that document as well as to a portion of the CJC Web site dealing with various issues relating to the adoption of technology by Canadian courts has been posted on the ARJD Facebook page. Saturday ended with a business meeting, at which: A majority of the membership voted to permit the Executive Board to review and adjust as necessary retiree and guest fees for the 2013 meeting in Washington DC; ARJD officers were elected for ; they are Leah Walker, President; Bill Hooks, Vice-President; Susan Williams, Secretary; and Kevin Loftus, Treasurer; and The next Executive Board meetings were set for November 16, 2012, and April 5, 2013, at the Supreme Court of the United States. Monday, August 6 Monday s session consisted entirely of an open discussion of questions that included: Whether the annual meeting s duration should be changed from Thursday through Monday to Thursday through Saturday or Sunday or whether the status quo should be maintained; members will be consulted for further input on the question, and the traditional 5-day schedule will be followed for the 2013 meeting; The advisability of adopting Bryan Garner s citational footnote style despite the absence of strong support among judges; and The need for another reporting processes-and-procedures roundtable with different jurisdictions presenting. 3

4 Communications Committee In the short time since the ARJD s annual meeting last August, François Boivin, with the help of Catherine Brideau from his office, has updated the ARJD s Web site to reflect developments stemming from our meeting in Chicago. Additionally, Cliff Allen, François and I (with formatting help from my wife, Carol Oakes) have begun work on updating the International Directory of Reporters of Decisions. The new Directory should appear on the ARJD s Web site in December or January. Dan Spurling will let the membership know when the Directory has been posted. Please review your entries carefully and send suggestions, corrections, and revisions to François at info.arjd@gmail.com. Incidentally, one byproduct of the Directory project has been the formulation of a new blast list of addresses that ComsComm will use to communicate with the ARJD membership. It is this list that Dan Spurling used to send members the job posting for the Washington State Reporter s position, the Board s survey on annual meeting length, and this issue of The Catchline. Dan will utilize the list once more when he lets you know that the new Directory is online. Finally, Brandee Mooneyhan and other ARJD members have been peppering our Facebook page with lots of informative and interesting word bytes and photos. As of this writing, 24 ARJD members have joined the Facebook group. Why not get in on the fun and see what it s all about? The instructions for joining the group are readily available in an article printed in the November 2011 issue of The Catchline. FRANK WAGNER Education Committee The Education Committee is excited to welcome Geri Cepeda as a member! She has already come up with some excellent and interesting suggestions for speakers and topics at the 2013 DC meeting and beyond. We have begun work on the educational component of the DC meeting. Ross Davies, of bobblehead fame, has expressed interest in speaking to us again, this time about Cranch s rewrite of Supreme Court cases during the Wheaton v. Phillips lawsuits. Derrick Lindsey, the Assistant Reporter of Decisions for the U.S. Supreme Court, has agreed to speak on the creation of macros that his court uses to increase office productivity. Once again, we will have a workshop with three Reporters speaking about how they do their jobs. If you are interested in volunteering to be on that panel, let me know! Other speakers and roundtables are in the works. If you have any ideas or suggestions please get in touch. I m trying to focus on DC-area speakers, so if you know of anyone who will be in DC in August do let me know. As always, I would love your suggestions on speakers and topics of discussion, as well as general ideas on what you d like to learn about. I think all ARJD members should consider themselves members of the Education Committee and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions. LEAH A. WALKER 4 External Outreach Committee I do not have any significant developments to report; however, I do hope we will have an opportunity at the next meeting to discuss some of the committee s previously introduced ideas. They are: Outreach. One way to educate a target organization is to serve as a guest speaker at its annual meeting. Library association meetings are held annually not only at the national level, but also at the regional and local levels Technology. Creating a blog can be an effective way to exchange ideas with members of other organizations who are either unfamiliar with what we do or don t realize what we have in common, but can derive benefits through association. Through this type of exchange, for example, we can share and develop ideas to preserve functionality and value in the face of challenges posed by the rapid implementation of new technology in the courts. Exposure. In Arkansas, the bar association holds its annual meeting in June. Judicial council is held twice a year. Organizations of all types establish booths to provide information to the legal community. This is another potential means to increase exposure and awareness. It might also be advantageous to expand on the benefits of association, as mentioned in Dan Anselmo s August 16, 2011, letter, for potential ARJD members. With that in mind, some of the more creative members may be willing to help design a brochure of sorts that will highlight those benefits. Bilee Cauley suggested that we continue to take advantage of our Facebook presence. That is challenging, but definitely feasible. And with all the hard work that went into establishing the site, we should not let that fall by the wayside. It is certainly understood that pursuing any of these ideas means asking for time and resources from the members which many just do not have. But again, it is a starting point to determine what we, as a group, think we can realistically accomplish to move us toward the goals announced when this committee was formed. SUSAN WILLIAMS Cornell LII Conference On October 7 9, the Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII) celebrated its 20 th anniversary by hosting the 2012 Law Via the Internet Conference on the Cornell Campus in Ithaca, NY. The LII was the first of an ever-growing cadre of online providers of free and open access to the law. LVI2012 attendees included many such providers, as well as academics, government officials, entrepreneurs, and other interested persons from around the world. ARJD members present were Wilma Grant, Brandee Mooneyhan, and Frank Wagner. Frank s presentation at the conference, Reporting the Law in Perennial Time, enumerated some of the developments and concerns that prompted the ARJD to issue, in 2007, its STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES: OFFICIAL ON-LINE DOCUMENTS. The full text of Frank s speech will be found linked on the conference home page, blog.law.cornell.edu/lvi2012. The ARJD s statement is posted under the heading Position Papers on this Association s Web site,

5 In the wake of his excellent presentation on The Leading Cases Information Retrieval Project at the ARJD s Chicago meeting (see Chicago Recap in this issue of The Catchline), Professor Richard Leiter, Director of the Schmid Law Library and Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law, volunteered to submit a short essay on a closely-related topic. Of course, the ARJD Board gratefully accepted. The Professor s piece, which follows, calls on Reporters of Decisions to see the challenges of technology in a new perspective. I want to thank you all for the privilege of addressing your amazing group. I only wish that I had had more of an opportunity to get to know you all better. As a librarian, I have many questions for you. Our two professions are intimately connected: If librarians may be called the chefs of the information world in that we serve up specific portions of information to patrons, then you reporters are the artisans who supply us with key specialty ingredients that we acquire to prepare our menus. In my talk, I hope that my respect and awe for what you all do shines forth appropriately. Because I rushed myself to conclusion (and because it simply slipped my mind), I skipped an important point that I wanted to make. It is important for professions like ours that deal with information as the tools of our trades not to fear the digital revolution. Be cautious and even apprehensive, sure, but don t fear it. I think today, finally, technology is realizing its promise and is developing into a medium that presents us with opportunities for preparing our ingredients and serving them up in exciting, new ways to our patrons. Before my talk, in informal conversations with ARJD members, I was surprised to find that many of you had concerns about modern punditry that predicts the end of your profession; i.e., that computers and the Internet are going to make the job of Reporters of Decisions unnecessary! Such predictions aren t new to librarians, either. We librarians have been facing a similar dilemma in the face of the rapid pace of development in technology. In the present structure of the information business, the two groups with the largest influence over what we do and how we develop are commercial publishers and technologists. Publishers have commercial interests, of course, and technologists are driven by a passion for free, open access to the legal materials that you produce. Both groups interests are legitimate and useful to us: Publishers facilitate wide, if costly, dissemination of our court opinions and technologists are giving us efficient and easy access to them. It seems we have little control over our own destinies. In 1985, a very wise library automation consultant, and one of my professors in library school, said that nowhere in the automation of systems and bodies of information is the truism more true: garbage in, garbage out. He was making the point that before we digitize and automate our library card catalogs, it is important that they be weeded and fine-tuned so that the quality of the analog information is as good as possible and is capable of taking advantage of the features and power that the new technology brings to publishing. It is a fact that if the card catalog is flawed for any reason, the flaws will be enhanced by the new technology. This is because the speed and power that computers bring to the search process tend to expose the flaws quicker than flipping through a drawer full of cards. The same can be said for the production of legal opinions. The work that Reporters of Decisions do is very valuable. The opinions as they come out of judges chambers are well thought-out and reasoned, but that doesn t mean that they re necessarily ready for publication. Reporters format, Publication in the Digital Age 5 and, where appropriate, edit the opinions and prepare them for publication; and not only print publication, but electronic publication, too. The message that I wanted to bring to the Reporters of Decisions, is similar to one that I ve been talking about in my own library community: We must become experts in the publication of, and use of this new medium, this new platform. In the past, it was presumed that librarians and reporters were expert not only in the use of books and pamphlets, but that we also knew about bindings and paper quality. Because we were experts, not only in the information, but in the form of the information, if a publisher came to us with an exciting new format: publishing cases on 3x5 index cards, for easy filing, for example, we d not only laugh, but we d discourage such a practice, and we d be able to list a million reasons why it was not a good idea! Today, publishers are adopting technologies that many of us don t understand. And they are putting much of the best quality of the material behind steep pay-walls that make the information virtually inaccessible to lay-people. Technologists are mounting electronic versions of documents online in formats that, while free and electronic (or digital), don t necessarily take full advantage of the power of computers. For one thing, there is a widely accepted myth that material that is online doesn t need indexing. Anyone who has conducted searches in online full-text databases knows that this is false. Reporters of Decisions are the ones who are actually producing the medium that contains the decisions of the courts, and, in the long, noble history of the profession, reporters have had a responsibility to produce the reports of the courts in a logical, systematic, and useful fashion. However, in today s climate of rapid technological development and change, the medium of electronic publication seems to be out of the hands of reporters. Publication is no longer done with materials with which we are familiar. No paper, ink, bindings, etc. It s now all about word processors, hypertext, meta data, URLs, and PERLs... I think that reporters (and librarians) should be more influential in directing how technology is used in publishing and distributing opinions. I think that it is the responsibility of each reporter to become expert in technology, in all its forms, so that we may be knowledgeable and influential forces in the future publication of legal opinions. Librarians, too, should be at the table actively participating in this discussion. If you think about it, we were all experts in the previous tools of publication: printing, binding, supplementation, paper quality, etc. It s my opinion that we need to be as comfortable with the new stuff we re working with as we were with the old stuff, that is, we should be as comfortable with digital forms of publication as we were with paper publication forms. Otherwise, the people with the least amount of knowledge about what we do will be calling the shots and dictating how we do it. Well, that s my two cents. Again, thanks very much for the invitation and the wonderful opportunity to address the group. RICHARD LEITER

6 Appreciation Verdery Grimes Knights died on September 2, 2012, after suffering a debilitating stroke. Those of you who have visited the Reporter s Office in the United States Supreme Court will remember her as the friendly woman who greeted you at the Maryland Avenue entrance and escorted you back once your visit was over. Quite likely, she also gave you a guided tour of the Court, the best tour you ve ever had. That s not surprising given Verdery s vast store of knowledge about the Court and its people, gleaned from her many years of service. Her career at the Court spanned 45 years, four Reporters of Decisions, and four Chief Justices. She started work in October 1967, the first woman hired as the Clerk- Messenger in the Reporter s Office. She remained in that position, at the same desk, for her entire tenure. Her career began at almost the same time as Justice Thurgood Marshall s, and they remained fast friends for the rest of the Justice s life. She was fiercely proud of that friendship and of her employment at the High Court. Verdery was born on April 14, 1936, in Augusta, Georgia, and moved to Washington, DC in She met and wed Hugh P. Knights in the Capital City, and the two remained lovingly married until Hugh died in She is survived by her sons, Michael and Melvin Gilchrist, and by five grandchildren, two great grandchildren, a sister, and a host of other relatives and friends. Verdery will be sorely missed. Personally, she was a good and caring friend, always eager to assist the Reporter in stressful times. Indeed, she was dedicated and generous not only to her family and friends but also to all her colleagues. She treated her Court family as her own, showing as much interest and taking as much pride in the accomplishments of our spouses and children as we did. She greeted everyone with a smile and a kind word, and made sure that those around her were at ease and filled with laughter. She was intelligent and perceptive, generously sharing stories of her life s experience and imparting wisdom to everyone with whom she came in contact. At her funeral this past September 14, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. who first met Verdery when he worked as a law clerk at the Court in 1980 spoke movingly of his long relationship with this extraordinary woman. FRANK WAGNER AND CHRISTINE FALLON Chris Fallon The following is reprinted with permission from SCOTUSblog. It appeared on June 26, The Supreme Court has a secret weapon for helping the public and the news media understand quickly what the Justices have decided in virtually every case. (Truth be told, she is also SCOTUSblog s secret weapon when we do live blogging, which puts a high premium on swift deciphering.) Of course, we are talking about Christine Luchok Fallon, the Court s Reporter of Decisions. And no reporter, in any medium, has ever had more demanding bosses: nine Supreme Court Justices. Before any argued decision by the Court is released to the public and the press, Ms. Fallon has performed the exquisitely delicate task of writing a summary of the ruling and doing it in a way that (1) gets it right; (2) does not leave out anything really critical; and, (3) most important, is acceptable to the author whose flowing (or plodding) prose she has turned into plain English. Although she has held the title for only about a year, Ms. Fallon has been carrying out these duties doing this kind of thing as Deputy Reporter for nearly a quarter-century and had been doing something similar for years before. It is a humble (and humbling) job because every edition of her work that is, every headnote that she prepares says at the top that it constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court. In other words, Christine Fallon has never decided a Supreme Court case with a headnote (the Court calls it a syllabus ), but she obviously has influenced how countless numbers of people have understood the Court s decisions. In just a few spare pages, a headnote makes what follows (sometimes in hundreds of pages) more accessible and easier to understand. Although she has a law degree, and is an experienced practitioner, no law degree is required to understand her headnotes. Around the Court s press room, near the close of Christine Fallon s first Term as the Reporter, it is common to hear that she does a really first-rate job and has made professional life measurably more comfortable for the news media and, we may assume, her legions of readers in the general public. She is, by the way, the sixteenth person to hold the post of Reporter in the Court s history. And she is the first woman in the post. Let s hear it for Christine Fallon! LYLE DENNISTON [Reprinted with permission from SCOTUSblog. It appeared on ] 6

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10 Officers President: Leah Walker, Supreme Court of the United States Vice President: William Hooks, NY State Law Reporting Bureau Secretary: Susan Williams, Appellate Courts of Arkansas Treasurer: Kevin Loftus (Ret.), Supreme Court of Connecticut Past President: Danilo Anselmo, Supreme Court of the United States Committee Chairpersons Annual Meeting: Leah Walker, Supreme Court of the United States Communications: Frank Wagner (Ret.), Supreme Court of the United States Education: Leah Walker, Supreme Court of the United States External Outreach: Susan Williams, Appellate Courts of Arkansas The Catchline Editors: Frank Wagner (Ret.), Supreme Court of the United States François Boivin, Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada Sophie Debbané, Office of the Commissioner for Federal Judicial Affairs Canada Newsletter Publisher/Layout & Design: Wilma M. Grant, Supreme Court of the United States Distribution: Daniel Spurling, Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts VOLUME XXXI, NO. 3 NOV.-DEC ARJD Contact Info ARJD Web site: Catchline (suggestions, comments, and questions): frawgn1@aol.com ARJD Members Facebook page: (to send documents, information or photos for posting on Facebook page): members.arjd@gmail.com (to send communications directly to all ARJD Facebook group members via Facebook Wall): members.arjd@groups.facebook.com address changes and corrections: bhooks@courts.state.ny.us Changing Your Address? If so, please notify ARJD ComsComm: info.arjd@gmail.com. It s the only way to make sure you ll continue to receive The Catchline. 10