Upgrade StorageMLZ Bluebook
I have a case citation with the following data:
Case Name: In re Looney
Jurisdiction: US|Fourth Circuit
Court: Court of Appeals
Reporter: F.2d
Reporter Volume: 823
First page: 788
When I now insert a citation in LibreOffice Writer it looks like this:
In re Looney, 823 F.2d 788 (B.A.P. 4th Cir. Court of Appeals).
while it should look like this (in my opinion):
In re Looney, 823 F.2d 788 (4th Cir.).
"B.A.P." magically appears, which is definitely wrong. Any ideas, what or where it is going wrong here?
Case Name: In re Looney
Jurisdiction: US|Fourth Circuit
Court: Court of Appeals
Reporter: F.2d
Reporter Volume: 823
First page: 788
When I now insert a citation in LibreOffice Writer it looks like this:
In re Looney, 823 F.2d 788 (B.A.P. 4th Cir. Court of Appeals).
while it should look like this (in my opinion):
In re Looney, 823 F.2d 788 (4th Cir.).
"B.A.P." magically appears, which is definitely wrong. Any ideas, what or where it is going wrong here?
I don't see that result here (although what I get is still not Bluebook-correct): Some questions to track down the cause:
- Entire Institution
- Journal, Reporter
- Place
Do you see "B.A.P." in any of the abbreviations listed? (if so, you should be able to fix the abbreviation there and carry on)As a (rather important) side note, the jurisdiction and abbreviation transforms were put in place to support a new, modular architecture for legal style development, which should be out in the next month or so. When it is deployed, the quality of legal style support should improve considerably.
The MLZ Bluebook style currently contains code for several jurisdictions, bundled into a single file. That design will not scale—and scalability is a critical requirement in my own faculty, where MLZ supports student research citing the laws of Cambodia, China, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, South Korea, Uzbekistan, some of the European states, a number of arbitration bodies, and documents issued by various international institutions. The modular design will allow us to draft compact styles narrowly tailored to the requirements of these individual jurisdictions. The "main" styles (Bluebook, Chicago, etc.) can then rely on the style modules for most legal cite forms, and as a result they will be much simpler to maintain.
It's an ambitious program (and not without speed bumps, as you have discovered); but the project is headed for stable ground. I am currently working on a module editor that will provide a comprehensive tutorial for style contributors, and help us to manage the submission and review of new code.
(For information [and for others who happen by this post] the development instance of the editor is here, and the production site to which it will be deployed is here—a GitHub account is required to access the style editor itself. The editor is basically complete; it only awaits completion of the documentation. Everything should be in place by the time the 20th edition of the Bluebook comes out this summer.)
- Abbreviation filter version 1.0.202
- upgraded from a regularly installed zotero version
I also had a look at Github mlz-abbreviations and it also seems to be listed wrongly there:
https://github.com/fbennett/mlz-abbreviations/blob/master/primary-jurisdictions.json#L155
the value in the court field. But is this the right way to do? The empty court field then gets marked yellow, which seems to indicate missing data.
To set that up, open the Abbrevs. popup, and select the "Institution Part" list. It should show several entries for "Court of Appeals". In the "us" entry, set this value:
!here>>>This will unconditionally suppress "Court of Appeals" in all cites in the "us" domain.
If "Court of Appeals" is required by a cite form in a lower-level jurisdiction (in some state's citation rules, for example) it can be "restored" by providing a value against that specific jurisdiction. (I don't know of such a case, but that's how you would get the value back if you need it.)
The syntax for this is hackey, but it works, and it is unambiguous. When we eventually come up with something more elegant, we can convert user data automatically at that time, so it is safe to use this markup in your work.
I had another look at the Juris-M/jurism-abbreviations Github repo and I am afraid to admit, but I am still struggling to understand the jurisdiction field.
When I hover over the inserted citation in OpenOffice it says that the jurisdiction field has the value "us:va".
When I look in the file "primary-us.json" there is a "us;va" key, and then the abbreviations specific to this jurisdiction.
When I look in the file "primary-jurisdictions.json" for the key "place", I find: "us|virginia": "Va."
Where and how is this information converted from "us:va" to "us;va" and "us|virginia"?
I assume that "us:va" is the value stored in my Zotero DB, which is then displayed as "US|Virginia" in the GUI. Also the value in the CSL item seems to be "us:va". But how can the entry "us|virginia" in "place" lead to the correct abbreviation "Va." when the value of jurisdiction is "us:va".
Re us:va and US|Virginia, that's it exactly: the former is stored in the DB, and the latter is used in the GUI.
The conversion between the DB and GUI values is done using a mapping table held by Juris-M. When the Abbrevs Filter is installed, the processor accesses the Juris-M mapping table with a hook function getHumanForm(), supplied to it by Juris-M.
Inside the processor, the jurisdiction ID is used for two purposes: (1) to select a jurisdiction style module; and (2) to display the jurisdiction in citations. For (1), we need a stable machine-readable key, and the DB value is used there.
In case (2), there may not be an entry in the Abbrevs Filter for the jurisdiction, and in that case it will be printed literally in the citation, with the expectation that the user will add an appropriate printed value for it. For that use case, we want the value to be immediately recognizable. The meaning of "us:va" will be immediately obvious to an American user, but the correspondence between "cn:xinjiang:bing.tuan:di.si.shi" and "CN|新疆|兵团分院|第四师" (the no. 4 district of military jurisdiction in Xinjiang Province, PRC) may not be so for a user in China.
Since we use the human-readable value of the jurisdiction when rendering it in the citation, it is also used as the abbreviation key value.
O’Reilly v. Morse, 56 US 62 (United States|US Sup. Ct. 1853).
when it should be:
O’Reilly v. Morse, 56 US 62 (1853).
Is this a bug? How do I fix?
First, to be sure that everything is up to date, (re)install the following manually from https://juris-m.github.io :
(1) Library Client
(2) Jurisdiction Support
(3) Abbreviation Filter
(4) word plugin for your word processor (under Juris-M Companions)
If you install the items above, you will be ready for the migration on a new, more robust version of the Blueboook style, which should come out later this year.
To fix the immediate issue with MLZ Bluebook Style, do two things:
(a) In the word processor citation popup, click on the Abbrevs. button, enter "United States" in the suppress-jurisdictions search box, and select the US from the list. That should set a bubble for United States, and the US jurisdiction will no longer appear is cites for the currently selected style.
(b) Court names should be dropped from cites only where the court is obvious from the reporter name. If installing the Abbreviation Filter does not automatically suppress court names with the "U.S." reporter, create a cite to U.S. reporter, then reopen it for editing. Open the Abbrevs. popup again, select the "Journal,Reporter" list, find the "U.S." entry for the "us" jurisdiction, and enter this:
!authority>>>U.S.That should suppress the court name on cites to the U.S. reporter.
a) when I do the suppress search and add, it takes a few times for the setting to "stick." The first couple of times, it just says "undefined" the next time I go back in. If I click on that and clear it a couple times, it finally adds a United States|US bubble
(b) I am familiar with court name dropping rules only when clear, but "Sup. Ct." being dropped is pretty standard bluebook, I think, if you are using the U.S. Reports. I would consider making the exclusion a default for U.S., L.E (and L.E.2d), and Sup. Ct. reporters. (or having folks build a list that can be imported - including, say, Cal. and Cal. App. etc.)
In any event, I add the tag in the Journal, Reporter list, and "Sup. Ct." does indeed go away.
However, I think part (a) is not working - perhaps related to the setting issue. Here is the new cite: O’Reilly v. Morse, 56 U.S. 62 (United States|US 1853). When I go to Word, the "United States|US" bubble appears, but the cite appears the same (wrong) way. I also tried to delete and recreate the bubble, and I get "undefined" over and over again and can't make it go away.
Thoughts?
Feature question: why grey out abbrevs button until cite is placed and only allow on edit? Why not allow fixing of abbreviations before the cite is placed the first time?
"Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (United States|US 1991)."
I did (a) and (b) above, and "United States|US" shows up in a bubble in the Abbrevs. pane of the Word for Mac plugin.
Thanks for reporting. I've just returned from a trip this evening. I'll dig into this tomorrow. I may come back with questions, but if all goes well, the next message will report a fix.
Two beta plugins are now up, for the Juris-M Client and the Abbreviation Filter. If you install both, the problems with suppressing jurisdictions should go away.
If you are able to try it out, please post back. A colleague in Cambodia is also testing; when we've confirmed that this is working for everyone, I'll make a full set of releases.
(@risch: The initial grey-out of the Abbrevs. button is by design, for the present. The fields to be abbreviated are acquired from the processor when it renders a citation. Before a cite has been rendered, its abbreviation targets will not be in the plugin's lists, so the button is greyed out during insert to prevent confusion. We can improve on this, but for the present I'll hold the behavior as it is for stability.)
Any news?
FB
Jurisdiction suppression should be working properly now. Upgrade two plugins - they are companions, you need to upgrade or install both. Upgrading each should work (if you have the official releases installed); if not, you can reinstall each of the two manually to get the current versions: