All written submissions to the court must adhere to COAL guidance as of September 8
British Columbia Court of Appeal chief justice Leonard Marchand has announced that the Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide will be its preferred legal citation method beginning September 8.
Citations in all written submissions, factums, written arguments, and memoranda of law to the court must adhere to COAL guidance. Marchand issued the practice directive on August 24.
The COAL guide was developed as an publicly accessible citation guide published via an open access model. It was inspired by the University of British Columbia Law Library Legal Citation Guide.
The COAL guide concentrates on the format for citing Canadian legal sources, including pinpoints, number use, URLs, translations of citations, dates, footnotes, in-text references, and bibliographies/tables of authorities. It also presents citation formats for secondary sources like books, news and journal articles, case comments, dictionaries, encyclopedias, websites, video and audio recordings, reports, dissertations, and theses.
Moreover, the guide lays out the format for citing government publications like parliamentary and legislative publications, non-parliamentary and non-legislative publications, Statistics Canada publications, and tax documents. It also presents how laws should be cited, including statutes, constitutional statutes, bills, regulations, orders, codes of professional conduct, Law Society rules, and municipal by-laws.
The COAL guide provides the format for case law citations. It also outlines how to cite international and foreign sources as well as First Nations, Métis, and Inuit - Crown Treaties.
The guide includes a section on citing material produced by artificial intelligence. It provided formats for referencing publicly available AI and not publicly available AI.
Under the COAL guide, an AI is considered publicly available if the AI version cited is accessible by the general public either through open or paid access; it is considered not publicly available if either the AI version cited or the AI itself is not accessible by the general public in any way.
Nonetheless, the guide emphasized that the citation format is not intended as a framework for AI use or for AI use disclosure. It referred guide users to the AI use and AI apply the disclosure rules laid out by courts, academic institutions, and other organizations with regard to concerns about bias, privacy, copyright, inaccurate information, and environmental impact.
The COAL guide was last updated on June 30 and has been released in French well. Faculty and students at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law have are also drafting an open access citation guide specifically for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit materials in the Canadian legal context.
