Bluebook
Encyclopedia
Style guide
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field...
, prescribes the most widely used legal citation
Legal citation
Legal citation is the practice of crediting and referring to authoritative documents and sources. The most common sources of authority cited are court decisions , statutes, regulations, government documents, treaties, and scholarly writing....
system in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The Bluebook is compiled by the Harvard Law Review
Harvard Law Review
The Harvard Law Review is a journal of legal scholarship published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.-Overview:According to the 2008 Journal Citation Reports, the Review is the most cited law review and has the second-highest impact factor in the category "law" after the...
Association, the Columbia Law Review
Columbia Law Review
The Columbia Law Review is a law review edited and published by students at Columbia Law School. In addition to articles, the journal regularly publishes scholarly essays and student notes. It was founded in 1901 by Joseph E. Corrigan and John M. Woolsey, who served as the review's first...
, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
The University of Pennsylvania Law Review is a law review focusing on legal issues, published by an organization of second and third year J.D. students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It is the oldest law journal in the United States, having been published continuously since 1852...
, and the Yale Law Journal
Yale Law Journal
The Yale Law Journal is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students at Yale Law School...
. Currently, it is in its 19th edition. It is so named because its cover is blue.
The Bluebook is taught and used at a majority of U.S. law schools
Law school in the United States
In the United States, a law school is an institution where students obtain a professional education in law after first obtaining an undergraduate degree.Law schools in the U.S...
, and is also used in a majority of U.S. federal courts
United States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
. Alternative legal citation style guides exist, including the ALWD Citation Manual
ALWD Citation Manual
The ALWD Citation Manual is a legal citation system for the United States compiled by the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Its first edition was published in 2000. Currently, it is in its fourth edition ....
and the Maroonbook, used by journals published at the University of Chicago Law School
University of Chicago Law School
The University of Chicago Law School was founded in 1902 as the graduate school of law at the University of Chicago and is among the most prestigious and selective law schools in the world. The U.S. News & World Report currently ranks it fifth among U.S...
. There are also several "house" citation styles used by legal publishers in their works.
The U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
uses its own unique citation style in its opinions, even though most of the justices and their law clerk
Law clerk
A law clerk or a judicial clerk is a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues before the court and in writing opinions. Law clerks are not court clerks or courtroom deputies, who are administrative staff for the court. Most law clerks are recent law school graduates who...
s obtained their legal education
Legal education in the United States
Legal education in the United States generally refers to the education of lawyers before entry into practice. - The first law...
at law schools that use The Bluebook. Furthermore, many state courts have their own citation rules that take precedence over The Bluebook for documents filed with those courts. Some of the local rules are simple modifications to The Bluebook system, such as Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
's requirement that citations to Maryland cases include a reference to the official Maryland reporter. Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
's Supreme Court has promulgated rules of citation for unreported cases markedly different from The Bluebook standards, and custom in that state as to the citation format of the Delaware Code also differs from The Bluebook. In other states, notably New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, and Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, the local rules are so different from The Bluebook that they are codified in their own style guides. Competent attorneys in those states must be able to switch seamlessly between citation styles depending upon whether their work product is intended for a federal or state court.
An online subscription version of The Bluebook was launched in 2008.
Elements
The 18th edition of The Bluebook governs the style and formatting of various references and elements of a legal publication, including:- Structure and Use of Citations
- Typefaces for Law Reviews
- Subdivisions
- Short Citation Forms
- Quotations
- Abbreviations, Numerals, and Symbols
- Italicization for Style and in Unique Circumstances
- Capitalization
- Titles of Judges, Officials, and Terms of Court
- Cases
- Constitutions
- Statutes
- Legislative Materials
- Administrative and Executive Materials
- Books, Reports, and Other Nonperiodic Materials
- Periodical Materials
- Unpublished and Forthcoming Sources
- Electronic Media and Other Nonprint Resources
- Services
- Foreign Materials
- International Materials
History
The origin of The Bluebook was a pamphlet for proper citation forms for articles in the Harvard Law Review written by its editor, Erwin GriswoldErwin Griswold
Erwin Nathaniel Griswold was an appellate attorney who argued many cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Griswold served as Solicitor General of the United States under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. He also served as Dean of Harvard Law School for 21 years. Several times he...
. In 1939, the cover of the book was changed from brown to a "more patriotic blue" to avoid comparison with a color associated with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
Criticism
At over 500 pages for the 19th edition, The Bluebook is significantly more complicated than the citation systems used by most other fields. Legal scholars have called for its replacement with a simpler system. The University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
uses the simplified "Maroon Book", and even simpler systems are in use by other parties.
Judge Richard Posner
Richard Posner
Richard Allen Posner is an American jurist, legal theorist, and economist who is currently a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School...
is "one of the founding fathers of Bluebook abolitionism, having advocated it for almost twenty-five years, ever since his 1986 U of Chicago Law Review
University of Chicago Law Review
The University of Chicago Law Review is a law journal published by the University of Chicago Law School, and was established in 1933. From 1942 through 1945 the review was published by the faculty, due to World War II. Prominent former student members have included Judge Abner J...
article on the subject." In a 2011 Yale Law Journal
Yale Law Journal
The Yale Law Journal is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students at Yale Law School...
article, he wrote that:
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation exemplifies hypertrophy in the anthropological sense. It is a monstrous growth, remote from the functional need for legal citation forms, that serves obscure needs of the legal culture and its student subculture.
He wrote that a cursory look at the Nineteenth Edition "put me in mind of Mr. Kurtz's dying words in Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...
--'The horror! The horror!'[.]"
See also
- Legal citation signalsLegal citation signalsLegal citation signals are a set of brief abbreviated phrases or words used to clarify the authority or significance of a legal citation as it relates to a proposition...
- Australian Guide to Legal CitationAustralian Guide to Legal CitationThe Australian Guide to Legal Citation is published by the Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc in collaboration with the Melbourne Journal of International Law Inc, and seeks to provide the Australian legal community with a standard for citing legal sources...
- Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation
- Oxford Standard for Citation Of Legal AuthoritiesOxford Standard for Citation Of Legal AuthoritiesThe or OSCOLA is the modern method of legal citation in the United Kingdom. First developed by Peter Birks of the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, and now in its 4th edition, it has been adopted by most law schools and publishers in the United Kingdom as well as the courts.-Cases:Cases are to...
(OSCOLA)
External links
- Introduction to legal citation, by Peter W. Martin
- A Bluebook Guide for Law Students, by Scott Akehurst-Moore