Legal support in CSL and CSLm

_Originally posted by @bdarcus in https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/issues/346#issuecomment-670939918_

We maybe need to come up with a principle by which we distinguish between legal support in CSL proper, and fuller-featured legal support in Juris-M.

I think, it’s a good idea to make this explicit.

While it may not be so clear, perhaps CSL supports legal citations in non-legal fields (generic legal support, for history, sociology, etc.), while Juris-M does law proper?

In general, I agree with you. Currently, I’m hesitating to promote Juris-M in German speaking countries because there are still pieces missing, in the schema and in the processor but this is a transitional state that I hope might end soon.

The question is: where to draw the line to decide which parts should go into CSL and which into CSLm. [side note: I have a very strong opinion about the multilingual things in CSLm to belong in vanilla CSL.]

Here are my thoughts (what do you think, @bdarcus @bwiernik @denismaier @fbennett?):

The two cases

• Full support for every aspect of legal citation — legislation, jurisdiction, executive orders etc., including parallel citation for related items, and also specific legal secondary sources like commentaries. This would be only possible with CSLm.

• Support for a basic set of features for legal citation in non-legal fields. This should be possible with CSL.

The current situation

• The legal parts in CSL were seemingly designed with the English/American legal systems in mind. Basic needs for those might be covered. Other systems might fit or might be made to fit in the existing schema with certain necessary features missing.
• Only a low number of legal styles are present as CSLm styles - Most legal styles are written in CSL.
• The legal styles in CSL are using many uncoordinated workarounds, so style-specific entry is very common. As an example, there are at least four Austrian legal styles, which are all incompatible one to each other, data-entry-wise, and incompatible to many non-legal styles, so somebody working in law and a second field might have troubles.

Principles

• The complex logic needed for law-specific features is restricted to CSLm.
• Variables not needed in non-law-specific styles don’t need to be defined in CSL.
• Style specific entry should be kept at a minimum even across the CSL/CSLm border: Where CSL and CSLm share variables, a user shouldn’t have to change data-entry depending on the CSL-extension in use.
• Methods necessary in both CSLm and CSL should be implemented likewise.

Consequences

• Legal parallel citation mechanisms, style modularisation and legal abbreviation handling belong to the realm of CSLm.
• Variables or behaviour indispensable for basic legal citation should be introduced to CSL, e.g.:
  • https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/issues/320 (probably requires also some wording in the CSL style repository policy about its use and non-use in CSL-styles?)
  • https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/issues/339 (unless CSLm is going to implement it differently)
• Other variables needed for legal citations should be evaluated if they are of use in CSL, as e.g.:
  • locator variables in https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/issues/346
  • the commenter variable (cf. https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/issues/320#issuecomment-661804113)

[georgd]

Specifically on the issue of multi-jurisdiction support, I do not think it would be a good situation to end up with many unique CSL styles duplicating conditional jurisdiction logic and formatting. That will lead to a maintenance mess to keep the legal parts of various styles up to date and accurate. This is why @fbennett developed the modular jurisdiciton system for CSLm, so that the formatting for a jurisdiction could be programmed once and then reused in every style.

To sum up my view:

1. Parallel legal citation is outside the scope of CSL
2. Multiple-jurisdiction legal citation is outside the scope of CSL

These are the two major complexities of legal citation that I do not think should be baked into standard CSL. “Basic legal citation” should be understood to mean “a researcher in a non-legal field cites a small number of legal items from a single jurisdiction”.

I’m sorry, but that’s not the reality. EU statutes are an integral part of every EU member’s legislation. Thus, citing Austrian law may mean citing EU statutes. EU law may be directly valid without the necessity of the member state to implement it in its own law. Thus, even if you only cite Austrian law, you will end up citing EU law as well.

I understand your point and I support your view to not duplicate the modular jurisdiction system in a huge number of monstrous monolithic vanilla CSL styles. That’s why I proposed to clarify this in the repository policy.

If you find a better solution to the EU case that wouldn’t open the door to this issue, I‘m fine with it as well. Just, the current situation is all but optimal.

[the-solipsist]

One note I would add: some popular style manuals provide citation guidance for some level of legal citation. It would be useful for the style manual collective hive mind to collate examples, and see what makes sense to include in CSL rather than CSL-M.

One shortcoming, for instance, is that the current CSL doesn’t distinguish between ordinary statutes and constitutions (both fall under “legislation”), whereas even popular styles such as CMS, APA, and MLA do require a separate style for constitutions (by notably, omitting the year field).

Having slightly more robust support for legal citations (at least to the extent that citation styles that aren’t law-specific support them), would certainly be helpful.

Further, I really like @denismaier’s proposal. The main reason I see for CSL-M being separate is that its complexity isn’t desired in regular CSL and that some modifications (rather than just additions) are required for it. But the main part of that complexity, from what I understand, isn’t mostly in the schema itself, but in (a) the specific styles that choose to use the extended schema and choose to implement complex conditional logic with them; and (b) the reference manager’s UI and processing to manage this complex logic. (Please let me know if my understanding is incorrect, as it well may be.)

The practical problem I see is that the extended schema cannot be used even if specific styles do not use complex conditional logic, they are still deprived of the additional item types, elements, variables, attributes, and locator terms. Further, any use of these extensions will fail CSL schema validation.

It would be useful to have a system where:

1. The citation software chooses whether to use a module or not depending on the style used. (Thus, citing laws in APA/MLA won’t require use of the module, whereas citing laws using OSCOLA/Bluebook will.)
2. The CSL schema validator can validate the styles that use extensions provided by these modules.

(If the above doesn’t make sense, then please feel free to ignore it. I’m a neophyte in the world of CSL, and may have misunderstood how things work. But I felt I could try to contribute to the extent that I did feel I understood.)