How to decode a citation to a case reporter Citations to cases are often in the form Style of cause (year, if not reflected in the citation), [citation]. The [citation] element generally will include an abbreviated form of the reporter (e.g., S.C.R., All E.R., Sask. R., P.), or a neutral citation of the Court (e.g. SCC, UKSC, ABPC, etc.) How can one determine what these abbreviations mean?
commonwealthunited-states The most comprehensive source of reporter abbreviation in the commonwealth and United States is found in the Index to Legal Citations and Abbreviations, which should be available at any law library. For the United States, the Bluebook might be more comprehensive. Most law schools or libraries also publish their own abbreviation indices for common reporters. See e.g. The University of Aberdeen's. Here is another from the University of McGill. They all show, for example, that &quot;All E.R.&quot; is an abbreviation for &quot;All England Law Reports.&quot; Some databases create their own citation formats that look like neutral citations: see e.g. https://www.bailii.org/bailii/citation.html
Judges don't have timesheet entries (and are often expressly excluded from FOIA obligations). They get paid salaries and are expected to work hard enough to clear their dockets in reasonable periods of time, however long that takes. If you wanted a more direct evidentiary estimate, you could estimate that a judge and his clerk together probably work 90-120 hours a week, figure out how many trials and hearings of what length were conducted and deduct that time spent on that from the total, and then divide the remaining hours by the number of opinions one can estimate that the judge wrote (or better yet, a reasonable estimate of the number of pages of opinions that one can estimate that the judge wrote). Typically, a lot of the legal research grunt work and more boilerplate parts of an opinion are written by the law clerk under some general instructions from the judge, with the judge writing the more substantive sections personally and heavily (or lightly, depending upon the quality of the law clerk) revising the draft opinion as a whole. The longer the opinion, the more likely it is that a substantial portion of it was written by the law clerk. For similar kinds of legal writing (e.g. appellate briefs and motions for summary judgment and proposed orders or written closing arguments) one to six hours per page from all professionals working on the document would be in the right ballpark. Judicial opinions come with some efficiencies, because once a judge decides a point of law or reaches a factual conclusion it doesn't have to be belabored in the same way that a litigant who isn't sure if their reasoning will be persuasive or not must. But, judicial opinions also typically have to spell out a greater proportion of legal and factual foundation for the end analysis that isn't hotly contested, will summarize all of the material points from the evidence presented in the case, and will frequently also recap in some detail the arguments made by the advocates for both sides of the case before actually engaging with those arguments in an analysis section. On balance, those factors probably pretty much balance out. If the judicial opinion is shorter, elegantly written, contains pithy turns of phrase, and/or contains lots of legal citations or factual analysis not raised by either party, it is probably closer to five or six hours per page or more. If the opinion is longer, has a rote and mechanical feel to it, and has very little factual analysis or references to law not mentioned by the parties, it is probably closer to one hour per page or even less. When some of these factors go one way, and other of these factors go the other way, it is probably in between in terms of hours per page. This said, sometimes it takes a judge a long time to write an opinion, but the end product is very short and elegant. In these situations, often what happened is that the judge and the judge's clerk spent lots and lots of hours writing a long and detailed first draft, then got an insight that provided a much more efficient and succinct way to reach a resolution to the case. In those circumstances, there would be dozens or scores of hours of work that went into the discarded first draft, only to be superseded by a half a dozen or dozen hours devoted to a much shorter final draft. In those cases, the final draft of the opinion might be ten or twenty hours per page or more once you include the time spent on the discarded draft. Of course, another factor is that some judges are just more efficient legal writers than others, and some judges have more familiarity with some areas of law than others. A opinion that might take one judge twenty hours to write might take another judge presiding over the very same case and producing an opinion of the same length and quality a hundred hours to write. The opinion in Meads v. Meads was 176 pages. If I had to make a best guess, I'd estimate that it probably took about 600 hours to write, probably about two-thirds of which was law clerk hours and probably about one-third of which was judge time.
The legislation in question is section 3A of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (this section was added to the original text of the CMA by section 37 of the Police and Justice Act 2006): 3A Making, supplying or obtaining articles for use in offence under section 1 or 3 (1) A person is guilty of an offence if he makes, adapts, supplies or offers to supply any article intending it to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3. (2) A person is guilty of an offence if he supplies or offers to supply any article believing that it is likely to be used to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3. (3) A person is guilty of an offence if he obtains any article with a view to its being supplied for use to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3. (4) In this section “article” includes any program or data held in electronic form. (Sections 1 and 3 refer to unauthorised access and impairing the operation of computer) In England and Wales, prosecutions are brought by the Crown Prosecution Service, there are guidelines produced by the CPS for section 3A: Prosecutors should be aware that there is a legitimate industry concerned with the security of computer systems that generates 'articles' (this includes any program or data held in electronic form) to test and/or audit hardware and software. Some articles will therefore have a dual use and prosecutors need to ascertain that the suspect has a criminal intent. ... Prosecutors dealing with dual use articles should consider the following factors in deciding whether to prosecute: Does the institution, company or other body have in place robust and up to date contracts, terms and conditions or acceptable use polices? Are students, customers and others made aware of the CMA and what is lawful and unlawful? Do students, customers or others have to sign a declaration that they do not intend to contravene the CMA? For Section 3A (2): In determining the likelihood of an article being used (or misused) to commit a criminal offence, prosecutors should consider the following: Has the article been developed primarily, deliberately and for the sole purpose of committing a CMA offence (i.e. unauthorised access to computer material)? Is the article available on a wide scale commercial basis and sold through legitimate channels? Is the article widely used for legitimate purposes? Does it have a substantial installation base? What was the context in which the article was used to commit the offence compared with its original intended purpose? Original answer from Sec.SE by Tom77
What does one do if, a party at trial denies having made a statement in a published article? A combination of a) and b). The plaintiff should gather other evidence with which to disprove the denials of authorship, or at least to question the reliability the publisher's testimony. The jury needs that evidence in order to discern who is credible. Whether decisive or not for credibility purposes, any material inconsistencies the plaintiff is able to point out from the witness's testimony(-ies) tend to guide the fact-finder (i.e., the jury) on matters of credibility. Whenever possible, the evidence should include admissible documents from when the events took place. For instance, records reflecting the submission &amp; editing process of that article. Those documents typically are obtained by subpoenaing the publisher and/or relevant non-parties, accordingly. That will reduce the chances of testimony deficiencies, whether these stem from witnesses' perjury, lack of memory, inability to clearly articulate what they know, or inability to testify at all (due to witness's illness or death by the time the matter goes to trial).
This article may be helpful. The development of a distinct, lower standard of proof for civil cases comes after the US came into existence, thus the expressions were developed independently, after the doctrine itself started to develop. Various expressions are used, often with different implications that could lead to fixing a specific expression to a definite doctrine, for instance &quot;greater weight of the evidence&quot;, &quot;more likely than not&quot; as well as the contender expressions. Earliest expressions of the principle in question include Edward Wynne Eunomus (1768) Wherever a verdict is given, the Plaintiff at least must give evidence to maintain his Declaration: where evidence is produced on both sides, the verdict is given for the Plaintiff or Defendant, according to the superior weight of evidence. Richards Wooddeson's 1777 formulation is In causes concerning civil rights and property, that side must prevail, in favor of which probability preponderates: but the (a) humanity of our law never esteems the turn of the balance sufficient to convict a man of any, especially a capital, crime. For it requires a very strong and irrefragable presumption of guilt to justify the infliction of the severer human punishments In Delaware (1801) in the case State v. Crocker, 2 Del. Cas. 150, the doctrine is &quot;named&quot;, preponderance of evidence: In civil cases a preponderance of evidence is sufficient for you to convict; in criminal, you should have proof You can find &quot;balance of probabilities&quot; in a UK case Head v. Head (1823). The origin of the construction &quot;balance of probabilities&quot; is philosophy and theology, whereas &quot;preponderance of evidence&quot; is a more-distinctly legal expression. Since the underlying ideas were developed separately in the US and England, it is not surprising that different expressions were attached to the doctrine.
You can use academic sources when arguing in court if you like, but be aware of the following: Academic texts are not primary sources of law in Jamaica. What is in them may be persuasive but does not bind a court in the same way as statute law or case law. Sometimes, it's appropriate to cite works of legal scholarship to flesh out an argument. If the book contains a succinctly-phrased statement that matches what you want to prove, but prior case law isn't quite as neatly applicable, then you might cite both - subject to points below. Citing the book alone is weaker. At other times, when there is authority on both sides of a point, you might find academic argument tipping the balance, but again not to be used in isolation. Whether a text is persuasive may not be obvious, especially for older works. Sometimes, perhaps often, the law has changed since the book was published. Don't assume that an old book by a famous author will automatically be revered. You can check to see if newer books say something different from the older one, and in general start your search looking backwards from now in order to identify the current state of the law. It is more common these days to see references to current editions of textbooks than comparatively ancient authorities, no matter how illustrious the name of Blackstone might be. If a point of law is not actually contested, then there is no need to argue about it. It can form part of the background material that is agreed on between the parties. Basic principles of the way contracts work don't need elaboration or authority. Judges would prefer to have you limit the number and range of authorities you bring in, because they only have so much time in their day and they don't want to struggle through a lot of unnecessary background reading. In a skeleton argument, the strong preference is for only one principal authority to be mentioned in support of each point of law. You can mention a recent decisive case rather than reciting the entire history of case-law on the topic, and you don't need to include cases where a well-understood precedent was applied without difficulty. It may be that a textbook brings you to the relevant statute or judgement but then that is what you need to cite, not the textbook itself, especially if it simply quotes or restates what is found in the primary material. For filing court documents in general, pay close attention to the Civil Procedure Rules and the Practice Directions, including PD No. 8 of 2020 on the format of the judge's bundle. If the judge is annoyed enough about non-compliance with the court's rules about submissions, then various sanctions are available to them. For example, they can refuse costs on the legal research that led to the preparation of the submission. In correspondence, which I think you allude to, you can be more free than when dealing with the judge's bundle. In a letter to the opposing party you can certainly bring in additional references that you think would be helpful to you as a matter of rhetoric and argumentation. Do note that doesn't mean it is a good idea to make correspondence too aggressive or lengthy. For one thing, a judge can end up reviewing the correspondence and will notice whether or not you are making a good-faith effort to resolve the matter, or at least identify the salient issues to bring to the court.
The main free resource is Bailii. I've sometimes also found cases on Casemine, which is free. The most popular paid resources are Lexis and Westlaw. In general, the paid databases are more complete and provide additional useful features such as cross-referencing statutes and cited/citing cases, information on whether the case is still good law or not, and others. For this luxury you will pay a heavy price: typically a few thousand a year depending on what type of subscription you take out. If you are lucky you can get free access via a university course. With that said, Bailii can sometimes have judgments not found on the others; particularly unreported judgments. Ideally as a professional you would have access to all three if you can afford to do so. If you want a specific case and can't find it on any database you may be able to ask the court to provide a transcript, usually for a fee.
Amicus briefs are never seen by juries. They only guide judges, and in the vast majority of cases, only appellate court judges. They are predominantly filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, a state supreme court, or a U.S. Court of Appeals circuit's panel. One of the most influential and most famous was the ACLU's amicus brief in the Brown v. Board of Education case, although there are hundreds of notable cases in which amicus briefs are influential, and dozens that are famous. The Anti-Defamation League (an organization devoted to fighting anti-semitism) also filed an influential amicus brief in Brown v. Board of Education. It is rarely possible to know with certainty how important a brief was (other than through echos of language or reasoning from the brief in the opinion itself), as judicial deliberations are generally strictly confidential. In a far lower profile case, for example, I once litigated a case in the Colorado Supreme Court in which an amicus brief from the Colorado Bar Association was probably very influential.