Mastering the Lawless Science of Our Law: The Subjectivity of Citators

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

11:15am – 12:15pm EDT

Location: Hynes-210

Coordinator(s)

Nicholas Mignanelli

Head of Reference and Lecturer in Legal Research
Yale Law School

Slides (PDF) Slides

Moderator(s)

GL

Grace Lo

Reference Librarian
Stanford Law Library

Speaker(s)

Cindy Dabney (she/her/hers)

Outreach Services and Foreign, Comparative & International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law
Indiana University Maurer School of Law
Bloomington, Indiana, United States
Aaron S. Kirschenfeld

Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Digital Initiatives Law Librarian
University of North Carolina School of Law

Citators have sustained the American common law for two centuries. Yet citators are tools created by humans and are, accordingly, subjective. For instance, in the years leading up to Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Shepard's assigned a red signal to Roe v. Wade while KeyCite attached a yellow flag to the same case. This program provides attendees with background about the historical development of citators, insight into the way determinations about the validity of cases are made, and strategies for conveying the subjectivity of citators to patrons.

Target Audience:

Any and all law librarians who wish to gain a deeper understanding of citators. This program is especially useful for those who have an instructional role in their law library, whether in a law school, government, or firm library.

Takeaways:

Participants will learn about the historical development of citators as essential legal research tools in a common law system.
Participants will gain a basic understanding about how modern legal research vendors make determinations about the validity of cases.
Participants will learn ways to convey the subjectivity of citators to their patrons.