Lecture Notes . . . About Star Pagination This is the method by which the publisher of an unofficial reporter attempts to assist the researcher determine what page s/he would be on if s/he were in the official publication. Star Pagination is primarily used to help the researcher pinpoint a cite in an official publication without having to actually go to the official publication. The best way to understand Star Pagination, however, is to go find it in the law library. Try this: • Go to the law library. • Pull out any volume of the Supreme Court Reporter (by West Publishing Company). • Turn to any case in the volume. • Find a sentence you want to quote (theoretically) a few pages into the case. • Somewhere above the sentence you are quoting, find the Star Pagination notation. As mentioned, the form of the notation may vary from publication to publication. A common example can be found in the Security State Bank v. Gugelman case back in the §4.2 exercise at the top of page 113. In the caption you will see a "bracket" with an 842 next to it. This indicates that the reader would be on page 842 if they were in the official publication. (Of course, the notation doesn't always appear in the caption. It can appear anywhere on a page.)

Demonstration Advanced Citation Demonstration (Click on Star Pagination)

 

Paralegal Perspectives . . .

STAR PAGINATION
You won't use star pagination all the time, but it's a great tool when you are in a bind to write a memo or other legal document and don't have access to the official cite.

The most difficult things about star pagination are:

-Not every unofficial publication uses star pagination. In fact, most do not.

-The symbol used to indicate where a page begins differs not only from publication to publication, but it also depends on how recent the publication is. Sometimes the page number is surrounded by brackets, sometimes by asterisks, and sometimes a strange little upside down "T-bar" is used. So be flexible. After you understand its function, it becomes less confusing.

Also, we have concentrated here on star pagination in law books in the library. However, as shown in the examples in this section in the manual, star pagination is also provided by Westlaw and Lexis. Knowing what those strange numbers are that seem to appear for no reason will help you feel more comfortable in the online research environment. And knowing how to star paginate will help you in creating full Bluebook-appropriate citations.

Think about this. If star pagination was not available and you needed to quote to a specific page in the official (for pinpoint purposes), you would need to find the official case and scan through it hoping to find where your quote appeared. That is not nearly as efficient as using star pagination to do the work for you.