However, as a reader, I am rarely as concerned with whether the writer put his citations in the correct form as I am about whether the cases cited will convince me of the law. Sloppy cite form is generally only annoying, but inaccurate selection of cases can destroy the credibility of a legal argument. Nevertheless, we seem to take it for granted that a legal author knows what cases are most appropriate to include in his or her document to support a given proposition. Advice to use the highest and most recent authority and to avoid string citations is commonly all that is said concerning the selection of cases to cite. However, legal readers know that string citations are as common as the advice to avoid them, and there is often little rhyme or reason why the author chose to cite Jones , Smith , and Miller , rather than some other combination of like cases to support a common proposition of law.
Most legal writers seem to have developed an instinct for which cases to pick and which to discard.
Moreover, the considerations that the writer consciously or subconsciously brings to bear upon which cases to include in legal citation are more complicated than merely citing to the most recent case from the highest court. These considerations probably begin with an informal categorization of all the cases found in the process of researching a given issue. This is generally the first case from the highest court to have decided the issue and stated the proposition of law in question. If the proposition was itself a reversal or revision of earlier authority, the seminal case is the reversing or revising case. As the first case to have stated the proposition in question, the seminal case has generally gone into some depth in analyzing the issue and the court s rationale in a manner that might not be repeated in later cases.