{"id":733,"date":"2016-10-11T20:32:13","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T20:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/?p=733"},"modified":"2021-12-11T18:11:18","modified_gmt":"2021-12-11T18:11:18","slug":"one-journals-defection-from-the-bluebook-its-reasons-and-6-page-replacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/?p=733","title":{"rendered":"One Journal’s Defection from The Bluebook – Its Reasons and 6-Page Replacement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Past posts have noted many points of\u00a0divergence between the citation norms manifest\u00a0in most judicial\u00a0and lawyer writing and The Bluebook<\/em>‘s dictates. They include such matters as case name abbreviations<\/a>, the identification of a writer’s online source<\/a> for cited primary authority, the format and content of treatise citations<\/a>, and inclusion of a currency date in citations to statutes or regulations<\/a>. The Bluebook<\/em>‘s\u00a0continued reign\u00a0over\u00a0law journal commentary\u00a0and programs of instruction on professional writing in U.S.\u00a0law schools has largely been taken for granted. Its dominance\u00a0within the legal academy<\/a> is undeniable.<\/p>\n

Ten years ago Professor Ilya Somin of George Mason explained that dominance<\/a> in terms of market failure. He argued that it was primarily a result of the decision’s being made by short-termers, student board members at a time they no longer bear the cost\u00a0of compliance and who, having previously mastered The Bluebook<\/em>‘s arcane rules, derive some satisfaction from imposing\u00a0them\u00a0on their successors as a form of hazing. In a companion Bluebook<\/em> critique<\/a>\u00a0Professor Somin\u00a0noted that The University of Chicago Law Review<\/em>\u00a0had, without evident loss of quality or prestige, employed\u00a0a simpler and more rational citation scheme ever since 1986.<\/p>\n

\"maroonbook\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today that journal\u00a0still follows its own citation guide, the “Maroonbook.”<\/a> The University of Chicago manual\u00a0is not a rule-for-every-situation guide. It aims, instead, to establish a framework for citation, in which general principles of sufficiency, clarity, consistency, and simplicity operate. In length it\u00a0runs to 85 pages compared to The Bluebook<\/em>‘s 560.<\/p>\n

Now, in 2016, comes another law journal breakaway with\u00a0an even more radical rejection of\u00a0Bluebook<\/em> rules and specificity. The citation guide<\/a> released this week by\u00a0The\u00a0Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice<\/a><\/em>\u00a0consists of a mere six pages of principles and examples.\u00a0The student editorial boards of other law school-based journals would do well to consider the reasons listed as propelling this change. The first cited by the Journal of Gender, Law & Justice<\/em> is the barrier that\u00a0Bluebook<\/em>\u00a0compliance\u00a0places in front of both scholars from other disciplines and practicing lawyers, thereby privileging the work of a relatively small group of authors. Those the requirement\u00a0favors, of course, are legal academics, who by virtue of background, resources (in the form of student assistants), or both can conform their\u00a0references to Bluebook<\/em>\u00a0mandates. A second reason cited is the costly diversion of editorial time and effort away from attention to an article’s\u00a0substance in order to scrutinize and perfect the\u00a0format of its footnotes. Lastly, the editors express concern about the the difficulty for readers, particularly those situated\u00a0outside the legal academy, posed by the Bluebook<\/em>‘s terse encoding of journal names. (They employ “J. Mar. L. & Com.” as an example.)<\/p>\n

\"bjglj\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Will\u00a0others likely follow?\u00a0The process of article submission has moved online. Rarely, today, are articles prepared for and submitted to a single\u00a0journal. Using services like Expresso<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Scholastica<\/a>\u00a0most law faculty members\u00a0submit their scholarly writing to multiple journals at once. The vast majority<\/a>\u00a0of those journals require citations of submitted manuscripts to be in\u00a0Bluebook<\/em> form.\u00a0This adds a powerful network effect\u00a0to the factors of market failure cited by Prof. Somin and the\u00a0prestige and strength of The Bluebook<\/em>\u00a0brand. As sound a decision as\u00a0The\u00a0Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice<\/em>\u00a0has made,\u00a0it seems unlikely to\u00a0foreshadow a\u00a0large scale exodus of journals through\u00a0The Bluebook<\/em>‘s force field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Past posts have noted many points of\u00a0divergence between the citation norms manifest\u00a0in most judicial\u00a0and lawyer writing and The Bluebook‘s dictates. They include such matters as case name abbreviations, the identification of a writer’s online source for cited primary authority, the format and content of treatise citations, and inclusion of a currency date in citations to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,22],"tags":[34,25],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bluebook","category-journal-articles","tag-bluebook","tag-journal-articles-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":763,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citeblog.access-to-law.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}