Bluebook

''The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation'' is a style guide that prescribes the most widely used legal citation system in the United States. It is taught and used at a majority of law schools in the United States and is also used in a majority of federal courts. Legal publishers also use several "house" citation styles in their works.

''The Bluebook'' is compiled by the ''Harvard Law Review'', ''Columbia Law Review'', ''Yale Law Journal'', and ''University of Pennsylvania Law Review''. Currently, it is in its 22nd edition (published May 2025). Its name was first used for the 6th edition (1939). Opinions have differed regarding its origins at Yale and Harvard Law Schools, with the latter long claiming credit.Liptak, Ada
"Yale Finds Error in Legal Stylebook: Harvard Did Not Create It"
''The New York Times'', December 7, 2015. Retrieved February 21, 2024.

The Supreme Court uses its own unique citation style in its opinions, even though most of the justices and their law clerks obtained their legal education at law schools that use ''The Bluebook''. Furthermore, many state courts have their own citation rules that take precedence over the guide for documents filed with those courts. Some of the local rules are simple modifications to ''The Bluebook'' system. Delaware's Supreme Court has promulgated rules of citation for unreported cases markedly different from its standards, and custom in that state as to the citation format of the Delaware Uniform Citation code also differs from it. In other states, the local rules differ from ''The Bluebook'' in that they use their own style guides. 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. California has allowed citations in Bluebook as well as the state's own style manual, but many practitioners and courts continue recommending the ''California Style Manual''.

An online-subscription version of ''The Bluebook'' was launched in 2008. A mobile version was launched in 2012 within the Rulebook app, which enables access for legal professionals to federal or state court rules, codes, and style manuals on iPads and other mobile devices.

Elements

The 22nd 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 (for use when a document makes multiple references to the same case)
* 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

While the legal citation manuals go as far back as ''Modus Legendi Abbreviaturas in Utroque Iure'' published around 1475, there were very few examples prior to the 20th century; law professor Byron D. Cooper mentions only few short articles "Rules for Citation" ( The American Law Review, 1896) and "Methods of Citing Statute Law" (Ruppenthal, Law Library Journal, 1919). The ''Uniform System of Citations'' thus became a "pioneer" manual.

According to Harvard, the origin of ''The Bluebook'' was a pamphlet for proper citation forms for articles in the ''Harvard Law Review'' written by its editor, Erwin Griswold. However, according to a 2016 study by two Yale librarians, Harvard's claim is incorrect. They trace the origin of ''The Bluebook'' to a 1920 publication by Karl Llewellyn at Yale on how to write law journal materials for the ''Yale Law Journal''. The authors point out that some of the material in the 1926 first edition of ''The Bluebook'' (as well as that in a 1922 Harvard precursor to it published as ''Instructions for Editorial Work'') duplicate material in the 1920 Llewellen booklet and its 1921 successor, a blue pamphlet that the ''Yale Law Journal'' published as ''Abbreviations and Form of Citation''.

For several years before the first edition of ''The Bluebook'' appeared, Yale, Columbia, and several other law journals "worked out a tentative citation plan", but Harvard initially opposed it "because of skepticism as to the results to be attained and in part because of a desire not to deviate from our forms especially at the solicitation of other Reviews". Eventually, Harvard "reversed course" and joined the coalition by 1926. According to Judge Henry J. Friendly, "Attorney General erbertBrownell, whom I had known ever since law school—he was Editor-in-Chief of the ''Yale Law Journal'' the year I was at the ''Harvard Law Review'' and he and I and two others rom Columbia and Pennsylvaniawere the authors of the first edition of the ''Bluebook''." Friendly has been considered the creator of ''The Bluebook''.

The cover of the 1926 ''A Uniform System of Citation'' was green. The color was "brown from the second (1928) edition through the fifth (1936) edition. It was only with the sixth (1939) edition that it became blue."Shapiro and Krishnaswami. In 1939, the cover of the book was changed from brown to a "more patriotic blue", allegedly to avoid comparison with a color associated with Nazi Germany. The eleventh edition, published in 1967, was actually white with a blue border. The cover color returned to blue in the twelfth edition of 1976.

The full text of the first (1926) through the fifteenth (1991) editions is available on the official website.

''The Bluebook'' uses two different styles. Practitioners use the first in preparing court documents and memoranda, while the second is used primarily in academic settings, such as law reviews and journals. The latter uses specific formatting to identify types of references, such as the use of small caps for books, newspapers, and law reviews. A rule of thumb used by many is to see if the formatting can be reproduced on a typewriter—if so, practitioners use it, if it requires typesetting, it is used for academic articles.

By 2011, ''The Bluebook'' was "the main guide and source of authority" on legal references for the past 90 years. It is recognized as the "gold standard" for legal references in the United States, even though it was originally designed only to help teach law students how to cite cases and other legal material. Although other citation systems exist, they have limited acceptance, and in general, ''The Bluebook'' is followed in the legal citation as the most widely accepted citation style, called the "Bible", the "final arbiter", even the legal citation "Kama Sutra". Some states have adopted ''The Bluebook'' in full, while others have partially adopted ''The Bluebook''. States such as Texas have supplements, such as ''The Greenbook'', that merely address citation issues unique to Texas and otherwise follow ''The Bluebook''.

Variations

Federal

The Solicitor General issues a style guide that is designed to supplement ''The Bluebook''. This guide focuses on citation for practitioners, such as restraining law reviews to two typefaces: normal and italics. Other changes are similiarly minor, such as moving ''supra'' from before the page referenced to after the page number. The guide does state that unless explicitly specified otherwise, ''The Bluebook'' rule takes precedence in the event of conflict.

State

California used to require use of the ''California Style Manual''. In 2008, the California Supreme Court issued a rule giving an option of using either the ''California Style Manual'' or ''The Bluebook''. The two styles are significantly different in citing cases, in use of ''ibid.'' or ''id.'' (for '), and in citing books and journals. Michigan uses a separate official citation system issued as an administrative order of the Michigan Supreme Court. The primary difference is that the Michigan system "omits all periods in citations, uses italics somewhat differently, and does not use 'small caps.'" As noted above, Texas merely supplements ''The Bluebook'' with items that are unique to Texas courts, such as citing cases when Texas was an independent republic, petition and writ history, and Attorney General Opinions.

Reception

Criticism of ''Bluebook''s prolixity

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.Richard A. Posner,
The Bluebook Blues
', 120 850–861 (2011). The University of Chicago uses the simplified " Maroonbook", and even simpler systems are in use by other parties.

During his tenure on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Judge Richard Posner repeatedly criticized the ''Bluebook''. In 1986, he wrote the article "Goodbye to the ''Bluebook''," hoping that the Maroonbook would quickly overtake it. In 2011, he wrote the article "The ''Bluebook'' Blues," lamenting that the ''Bluebook'' remained dominant despite its increasing complexity, while providing the 885-word citation manual used among his law clerks.

''BabyBlue'' copyright controversy

Another dispute is over the copyright status of ''The Bluebook''. Open-source advocates claim that ''The Bluebook'' is not protected under copyright because it is a critical piece of legal infrastructure. Lawyers who represent the Bluebook publishing consortium claim that the "carefully curated examples, explanations and other textual materials" are protected by copyright.

A group led by Professor Christopher J. Sprigman at NYU Law School prepared a "public-domain implementation of the ''Bluebook'' Uniform System of Citation," which his group calls ''BabyBlue''. However, a law firm (Ropes & Gray) representing the Harvard Law Review Association (HLRA) sent him a letter stating:

In response to the HLRA letter to Sprigman, over 150 students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Harvard Law School signed a petition supporting ''BabyBlue''. Yale and NYU students added their separate petitions supporting ''BabyBlue''.''Harvard Law Review Should Welcome Free Citation Manual, Not Threaten Lawsuits''
(February 16, 2016). A posting in the ''Harvard Law Record'' commented:

The posting also suggested that HLRA should "redirect the money it spends on legal fees ($185,664 in 2013)" to a more worthy purpose. David Post commented: "It's copyright nonsense, and Harvard should be ashamed of itself for loosing its legal hounds to dispense it in order to protect its (apparently fairly lucrative) publication monopoly." On March 31, 2016, it was announced that the project had changed its name to '' The Indigo Book''.

Financial controversy

For the first 50 years of the ''Bluebook'''s history, the Harvard Law Review kept 100 percent of the revenues., Yale Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 560 In 1974, the editors of the '' Columbia'' and ''University of Pennsylvania Law Reviews'' and the ''Yale Law Journal'' apparently discovered this due to an indiscretion. They complained that Harvard was illegally keeping all profits from the first eleven editions, estimated to total $20,000 per year. After they threatened to sue, Harvard agreed to split the revenue: 40 percent for Harvard, 20 percent each for Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Yale; Harvard would continue to provide the production and distribution services.

The law reviews have not disclosed the revenues of the ''Bluebook'' themselves, but revenues from the sale of the ''Bluebook'' have been estimated "in the millions of dollars". A 2022 review of the ''Harvard Law Review'''s non-profit disclosures found that the ''Bluebook'' had made $1.2 million in profits in 2020, with ''The Harvard Law Review'' taking an 8.5% cut of profits for administrative services and the remainder split equally among the four law reviews. Profits from the ''Bluebook'' totaled $16 million between 2011 and 2020. Excluding the ''University of Pennsylvania Law Review'', the law review's endowments total $59.4 million.

See also

* ''Australian Guide to Legal Citation''
* ''Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation''
* Case citation
* Legal citation signals
* ''Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities'' (''OSCOLA''; UK)

References

Sources

* {{cite journal , last=Cooper , first=Byron D. , title=Anglo-American Legal Citation: Historical Development and Library Implications , journal=Law Library Journal , date=1982 , volume = 75 , issue=3 , url=https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub/1745/ , access-date=2024-03-19 , pages = 1745–

External links

*
The Indigo Book: An Open and Compatible Implementation of a Uniform System of Citation
', a public-domain implementation of the ''Bluebook'' rules

Introduction to legal citation
by Peter W. Martin

A Bluebook Guide for Law Students
by Scott Akehurst-Moore

American law journals
Bibliography
Legal citation guides