Non-Bluebook nominative reporters

[jcushman]

I was reviewing some metadata errors where we had volumes with two different volume numbers, and discovered some additional reporters that were published with nominative volume numbers. We (CAP) didn't know about these nominative cites because the Bluebook only documents the official cites for these ones:

N.Y.:
- Comstock is 1-4
- Selden is 5-10
- Kernan is 11-14
- Smith is 15-27
- Tiffany is 28-39
- Hand is 40-45
- Sickels is 46-94

Ark.
- Pike is 1-5
- English is 6-13

N.J. Eq.
- Saxton is 1
- Green is 2-4
- Halsted is 5-8
- Stockton is 9-11
- Beasley is 12-13
- McCarter is 14-15
- Green is 16-
- Stewart is 28-45
- Dickinson is 46-66
- Robbins is 67-70
- Buchanan is 71-86
- B. Stockton is 86-
- [more?]

These are nominatives in the sense that they were numbered and cited at the time according to the court reporter's name, instead of or rather than the official series name. For example, here's the cover page of 10 N.Y., numbered as volume 6 published by Selden, and here's cases citing to 6 Selden:

I dunno if these are all worth including -- they might just add confusion, and probably aren't cited this way much? But I wanted to document the discovery anyway. Some of these, like Stockton, are currently in reporters-db, but I think most aren't.

[mlissner]

the Bluebook only documents the official cites for these ones

I'm curious. Are y'all fixing the Bluebook yet? They're what, a few hundred meters from you, right? :)

they might just add confusion

Well, I'm a bit confused, sorry. Why are these so different than others that we have? Is it because the volume numbers don't line up? My usual default is inclusion even if it makes things more confusing, so it'd take a bit to override that if you know which ones need to be added.

[jcushman]

They're what, a few hundred meters from you, right? :)

Hah, yeah, we're like two different stores at the same food court. We have the same landlord but they don't exactly ask us what should go in the special sauce. But in all seriousness I'm happy to open up a conversation offline if there's something we should be talking about with them.

Why are these so different than others that we have?

Oh, they're not, really; I suppose they should be in. I was just dragging my feet a little bit because there's a lot of them and they're sort of de minimus. I'm documenting what's on the cover pages, and noticing that the volumes seem to be numbered this way and cited by these names at least a handful of times, but I don't have a sense for how often these cites were actually used.

I guess the only reason to keep stuff out is the more ambiguous reporter strings we add, the smarter our disambiguation has to be. But yeah, that's a problem for another day, not a reason to exclude things.

Oh here's a source on the New Jersey nominatives, which also includes N.J.L..

[mlissner]

I haven't gotten the impression that the Blue Book people are super responsive to outside pressure, but I've often thought that this reporter DB would be a goldmine for them and that working together would be smart. I bet if we made an effort we could find a dozen or maybe a hundred ways the Blue Book could be enhanced by what we know. This isn't a priority for us. I always felt like they should take notice of the reporter-db and do...something with it.

Glad I wasn't totally confused about the new reporters. Totally can relate to dragging heels on this one. There just keep being more and more reporters.

[devlux76]

I swear there's a rule for dealing with these but why wouldn't it be [Edition] [Author] e.g. 1 Comstock or 1 Seldon I say that because it's the author's first edition and typically it's the author & editor that matter here.