My frustrations with SCRA guys and Rex

The SCRA guys are professors who cite only the SCRA number after the names of the parties to the case instead of the G.R. number in the cases they list in their syllabus. Another group of SCRA guys are the law book authors who do the same in their citations.

When I first went to law school ages ago - when Constitutional Law meant the Marcos constitution - the main source of jurisprudence would be the SCRA.

Since I went to a non-"Ivy League" law school it meant there were, at most, only one copy for each volume of SCRA. And you can imagine the queue for that one volume in order to hand-copy the assigned reading. Or another queue to have it xeroxed at the lone copier in the law school.

When I went back to law school - this time at an almost-"Ivy League" school - Lawphil and ChanRobles were the new game in town for sourcing jurisprudence. The virtual library of the Supreme Court is also a good source but its database is sparse. The new game is game changing indeed. 

One caveat, though, about Lawphil and ChanRobles: their copies of jurisprudence are riddled with typos in almost the same places which make one think that they have outsourced their transcription from the same people. Or their source simply OCRed their printed cases as can be judged by the kinds of typos usually resulting from OCR softwares.

Of course, if you miss the Same, same format of the SCRA you can always go to the library because nowadays the queue is not there anymore. It seems everyone would rather go to Lawphil or ChanRobles while keeping tab with friends via FB.

If the professor only cites the SCRA number and the names of the parties to the lawsuit are commonplace, you're in trouble. You'll end up bringing and reporting in class the wrong case. 

A major source of frustration for me is when the book I am reading at home cites only the SCRA. My reading flow is interrupted when I can't get back immediately to the book because of the time googling the jurisprudence. 

Now I can understand if Justice Isagani Cruz in his  fine books  refers only to SCRA in most of his citations because his publisher is also the publisher of the SCRA. But I am disappointed when books published by Rex also in many places only cite the SCRA.