Bill,
I'm posting a copy my email to you. I didn't see that the poll gave an option like my suggestion. At any rate thanks for your work with the rules.
Tom
Bill,
Thank you for your work with the Rules I am very pleased to be able to find them on the Class website. It would be great if there were a link to them under the 'info' tab on the main website page.
I do have a suggestion regarding the organization of the rules. Could you please start with the current language and move all the modifications and modification history to the end of the document? Highlighting the most recent changes in the text is a good idea.
As an attorney I work with laws that seem to change every day. They are continually modified by legislatures changing the wording of statutes, interpretations made by published court decisions and advisories made by attorney generals and other government entities. I can't think of a jurisdiction I've looked at where changes are listed before the applicable statute. In fact judges usually use the current code which is published with only the current language and takes up just two volumes one for civil one for criminal.
You can find all the changes and interpretations in the Annotated Code, which usually takes up several shelves. Annotated Codes will start with the current language, give a legislative history and then list synopsis and citations of case law and other interpretations relevant to that part of the statute. With today's hypertext links current research tools have shorter synopsis than their hard copy counter parts did and substitute links in or behind the text sending you directly to the cited case or other referenced statute.
These tools are all relevant because we're often litigating around the edges of case law arguing that our current circumstance is more like this or that particular relevant case.
With our class rules we are not doing anything of the sort. While the historical information is interesting including it just clutters up the rules and makes them more confusing.
Thanks, Tom
