In the Broadway musical, and later film, My Fair Lady, Professor Higgins sings a very catchy song by Frederick Loewe, entitled, “Why Can’t the English?”, which, with rapier wit, laments the failure of the English to teach their children the proper use of the English language. At one point, Higgins, when speaking of the French learning French, says, “The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.”
That observation, together with the phrase, “the triumph of form over substance”, came to mind recently when I received yet another email from those very well-meaning people who seem to reside in a judicial galaxy far, far away, and who earn their daily bread by telling the rest of us in this world how to do our jobs.
This latest encyclical was directed at the scourge of the non-conforming case citation. You must have read or heard about it; it clearly ranks up there with global warming and the threat of nuclear war. Brace yourself, but I must tell you, as distressing as this will be for you: not all judges have been adhering to the latest edicts from those who write the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, sometimes referred to as The McGill Guide. I know. The sheer enormity of this egregious state of affairs is staggering.
We have been told that some Judges, and remember that Judges are, together with lawyers, the trustees of our nation’s system of justice, have actually been citing cases using periods in the abbreviations for the case reports. They have, for example, referred to the Canadian Criminal Cases as “C.C.C.” instead of “CCC”. The horror of it!
We who labour in the courtrooms have been told by the citation clergy that uniform citations will assist the readers of our decisions. Imagine the untold number of readers who have been completely flummoxed in their attempts to locate, for example, the decision cited as 68 C.C.C. (3d) 308. Had the offending Judge instead written 68 CCC (3d) 308, all would have been become clear to the reader as the scales of the oppressive punctuation fell from his or her eyes.
There are also instructions about the order in which case report sources are to be listed. There are instructions about the placing of commas (commas must have a better literary agent than periods, as the latter are banished, but the former have enjoyed a resurgence).
I can only infer that the members of the McGill Citation Police (MCP, not M.C.P.) are very timid, fawn-like creatures easily startled and frightened away by the appearance of wee little dots between letters such as CCC or DLR or SCR, or the failure to list first a neutral citation. The rough and tumble of modern life must be very difficult for them.
You will be happy to know that training sessions are being offered to the judges so that we can break down this last remaining and formidable barricade to access to justice. Yes, people are being paid to tell us where to stick bits of punctuation. I know people who would happily do that for free.
Emerson said, and not in a complimentary tone, “the virtue in most request is conformity”, and that “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. I don’t think that he and those in that judicial galaxy far, far away would get along very well.
The Honourable Judge A.A. Fradsham is a Provincial Court Judge with the Criminal Court in Calgary. His column “A View From the Bench” has been a highlight in the Canadian Bar Association newsletters for over 15 years.