[Request] Multiple relation types to support relationships between court decisions

[alercah]

In some legal citation styles, citations of legal cases occasionally include historical information about the case.

Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association v Ontario (AG) (1998), 162 DLR (4th) 257 (Ont Ct J (Gen Div)), rev'd in part (1999), 172 DLR (4th) 193 (Ont CA), rev'd 2001 SCC 15.

This citation indicates that the main case, from the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division), was reversed in part (i.e. partially upheld, but partially overruled) by the Ontario Court of Appeal and then later reversed in its entirety by the Supreme Court of Canada.

I've considered how to implement these kinds of historical references to other cases in the data model, and I don't think there is a reasonable way to do it other than relations. But unfortunately, as this example demonstrates, multiple different relation types are required on a single entry, in this case, say, reversedby and reversedinpartby. It's also conceivable that a citation to an appellate case might include, say, affirming the trial court and reversedby the Supreme Court.

Given the current lack of support for multiple distinct relation types, the only alternative I can think of is to have each of these relations as a separate field. If there's no appetite for supporting multiple relation types, then that would be my preferred approach.

[alercah]

As a side note, there are also sometimes annotations of a similar nature that may or may not include a citation to another case. For instance, the McGill Canadian style includes "leave to appeal to <court> requested/granted/refused" and "appealed as of right to <court>" as possible citations.

If you have any suggestions how best to include these in the data model, I am all ears. It's also worth noting simply putting these in the postnote won't work, as that field needs to be reserved for pinpoint references so that supra and ibidem work correctly.

[alercah]

Correction: I've just discovered a complicating factor in that the individual references can be annotated separately with commentary in a footnote:

See Lawson v Wellesley Hospital (1975), 9 OR (2d) 677, 61 DLR (3d) 445, aff'd
[1978] 1 SCR 893, 76 DLR (3d) 688 [Lawson] (duty of hospital to protect patient);
Stewart v Extendicare, [1986] 4 WWR 559, 38 CCLT 67 (Sask QB) [Stewart] (duty of
nursing home to protect resident)

So I'm not sure I need this feature any more, as I may need to throw out my work so far and handle this using some complex variation on \cites... I'll leave this issue open for now though.