Bluebook
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- This page is about the legal citation style. See also Blue book.
The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation is a style guide and a widely used legal citation system in the United States. The Bluebook is compiled by the Harvard Law Review Association along with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. Currently, it is in its 18th edition. It is so named because its cover is blue.
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[edit] Usage
The Bluebook citation system is the standard at most American law schools and law journals (though the total number has been decreasing slowly). It is often used in the federal courts. In contrast, many state courts (especially New York and California) use homegrown citation systems which are quite different from Bluebook style.
[edit] Examples of Bluebook citation
The 18th edition Bluebook has 21 Rules. Each Rule comprises many complex detailed Rules.
- 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- Unpublished and Forthcoming Sources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
A beginner may want to study the first nine rules and the citation of five types of most-frequently used materials: Cases (Rule 10), Constitutions (Rule 11), Statutes (Rule 12), Books (Rule 15) and Periodicals (Rule 16). Unless you're a practitioner, you may ignore court document citations at least in the very beginning of your study.
[edit] Rule 1-9: Introduction and general rules
The underline and bold fonts are only added to distinguish each field. The Roman, italic and small caps fonts are required by the Bluebook for articles in law journals. The rules for practitioner citations are somewhat different (and often superseded by jurisdiction-specific requirements).
Rule 1.2 requires each source, regardless of type (e.g., book, case, periodical), to be introduced by a signal unless the cited authority (i) directly states the proposition, (ii) identifies the source of a quotation, or (iii) identifies an authority referred to in the text. The signal should be italicized. Signals include E.g., See, Cf., and others. Each signal has a specific usage and signals within a citation are to be in a specific order.
Notes:
- The author's name is the name signed on that article. If the article says "by Jennifer 8. Lee", do not use "Jennifer Eight Lee" even if it's printed on her driver's license.
- The publish date is the date printed on that publication.
- Except for May, June, July and September (Sept.), all other months shall be abbreviated to the first three letters.
[edit] Rule 10: Cases
The simplified general format of a case is:
- Name of the case, Published source(s), Cited page(s) (Court and jurisdiction, Year or date of the decision), [optional] Subsequent history.
-
- such as:
- United States v. MacDonald, 531 F.2d 196, 198-89 (4th Cir. 1976), rev'd, 435 U.S. 850 (1978).
The underline and bold tags are only added to distinguish each field. There are additional rules dealing with these parts. The italicized parts are required by the Bluebook.
The above citation points to a decision made by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (4th Cir.) in 1976 and reversed by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1978. The case's title is: United States v. MacDonald where the plaintiff was the United States represented by some United States Department of Justice attorneys and the defendant was a murderer named Jeffrey Robert MacDonald who killed his wife and two daughters in 1970. To use a database to retrieve the case, you may only need to enter "531 F.2d 196", the case citation.
To cite a U.S. Supreme Court decision, the court and jurisdiction field must be omitted because the name of the reporter already says it all, because — where the Federal Reporter, cited in the preceding example, covers many United States Courts of Appeals — the United States Reports covers only the Supreme Court. For example:
- Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 116 (1973).
There are additional rules dealing with undecided cases, unpublished interim orders, unpublished decisions, and many other legal documents. A beginner may not use these documents very often.
[edit] Rule 11: Constitutions
The United States only has 51 constitutions. That means constitutions are very easy to cite.
To cite the Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution:
- U.S. CONST. art. I, § 9, cl. 2.
To cite the Section 2 of the 14th Amendment:
- U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 2.
To cite the Preamble to the United States Constitution:
- U.S. CONST. pmbl.
To cite a state constitution, in this case, the Article 4, Section 7 of New Mexico:
- N.M. CONST. art. IV, § 7.
If the constitutional provision has been repealed, you may simply cite the year of the repeal, or include the repealing provision in full. For example, the 18th Amendment (prohibition) was ratified in 1919 and repealed in 1933 by the 21st Amendment:
- U.S. CONST. amend. XVIII (repealed 1933).
-
- or
- U.S. CONST. amend. XVIII, repealed by U.S. CONST. amend. XXI.
Amendments use the same format for repeals:
- U.S. CONST. art. I, § 2, cl. 1 (repealed 1913).
-
- or
- U.S. CONST. art. I, § 2, cl. 1, repealed by U.S. CONST. amend. XVII, § 1.
Note:
- The article number must be written in Roman numerals (e.g. I, II, III, IV, ...).
[edit] Rule 12: Statutes
To cite an individual provision of the United States Code:
- Title number Code abbreviation § Specific section (Date of code edition cited).
-
- such as:
- 28 U.S.C. § 1291 (1994).
(For the full text of the cited statue, visit: Title 28 > Part IV > Chapter 83 > § 1291.)
[edit] Rule 15: Books
- AUTHOR'S FULL NAME, BOOK'S TITLE cited page (editor's full name ed., publisher year of the edition) (original publication date)
-
- such as:
- CHARLES DICKENS, BLEAK HOUSE 50 (Norman Page ed., Penguin Books 1971) (1853).
In this case, Charles Dickens's Bleak House is cited. This book was first published in 1853, but is now in the public domain. The edition cited here was edited by Norman Page and published by Penguin Books in 1971. The cited page is page 50.
[edit] Rule 16: Periodicals
[edit] Rule 16.3: Consecutively paginated journals
The simplified general format is:
- Author's full name, Article's title, Volume number JOURNAL TITLE Start page, Cited page, (Published year).
The author's name of a journal article must not be set in small caps.
- Patricia J. Williams, Alchemical Notes: Reconstructed Ideas from Deconstructed Rights, 22 HARV. C.R.–C.L. L. REV. 401, 407 (1987).
If the cited journal lacks a volume number, use the published year as a substitute:
- Thomas R. McCoy & Barry Friedman, Conditional Spending: Federalism's Trojan Horse, 1988 SUP. CT. REV. 85, 100.
Notes:
- The year 1988 now moves to the volume number's place.
[edit] Rule 16.4: Nonconsecutively paginated journals
The simplified general format is:
- Author's full name, Article's title, Journal's title, Date of issue, at First page, Cited page.
-
- such as:
- Barbara Ward, Progress for a Small Planet, HARV. BUS. REV., Sept.-Oct. 1979, at 89, 90.
If the article is not signed, the author's name must be omitted:
- Damages for a Deadly Cloud: The Bhopal Tragedy Will Cost Union Carbide $470 Million, TIME, Feb. 27, 1989, at 53.
[edit] Rule 16.5: Newspapers
The simplified general format is:
- Author's full name, Article's title, Journal's title, Date of issue, Cited section.
-
- such as:
- Ari L. Goldman, O'Connor Warns Politicians Risk Excommunication over Abortion, N.Y. TIMES, June 15, 1990, at A1.
[edit] Criticism
The Bluebook is notorious for being too rule-oriented, too concise, and too cryptic in comparison to the more helpful citation system guides used in other academic fields (e.g., Turabian). It has been criticized for the somewhat bizarre nature of some of its rules, such as having two separate styles: one for academic legal articles (where citations are always footnoted), and one for court documents (where citations are usually inline). The Bluebook is a notorious vehicle for bill padding in law firms. Its cryptic style and sometimes conflicting rules mean that it is time consuming to use; in addition bluebooking is often checked and rechecked. The cost of this is passed on to the client through the attorneys' hourly rate, despite the arguable lack of legal substance in the work.
[edit] Cryptic styles
The current systems of citation are also artificially limited by the printing process. Many cryptic abbreviations were created to cram more footnotes on a page. This can make a Bluebook-compliant article very difficult to study. A layperson may have a difficult time to figure out which abbreviation refers to which journal (e.g.: TUL. MAR. L.J. means Tulane Maritime Law Journal; if a reader knows little about Tulane University or maritime law as a legal branch, this citation can be difficult to decipher).
The Bluebook also encourages content-specific omission of page indicators. Unlike most other citation systems, it seldom uses "page", "p." or "pp." (plural form) to indicate page numbers. At most, the Bluebook uses "at". If it is allowed to omit the "at", it is required to do so.
[edit] Internet and other digital sources
Most researchers today use the Internet daily or even hourly. In addition to legal databases such as Westlaw and LexisNexis, most researchers would use every possible Internet- or CD-ROM-, DVD-ROM-based reference materials. Some of them may use Wikipedia. By definition, Internet materials are indispensable to cyber law researchers. However, Rule 18 of the 17th edition Bluebook, published in 2000, was generally regarded as not good enough even as a guidebook. (Note: see the guide to citation to the Wikipedia below.)
The presumption of Bluebook is to cite a printed copy if it is available. You only cite a digital copy when a printed copy is not available. However, since many publishers of newspapers, books and periodicals, government offices and even courts are providing digitized materials online, many researchers may use printed materials only once in a while. Some materials, such as courtroom transcripts, are usually only available as scanned PDF files or even sound recordings. Today, it becomes more and more unreasonable to ask writers or readers to get a printed copy of something from a library.
To help people and a computer recognize the boundary of a URL, many citation systems encourage the use of "less than" and "greater than" signs to enclose URLs (e.g., <http://www.wikipedia.org/>. Bluebook does not follow this convention. It uses nothing. Therefore, a long and confusing URL may not be quickly deciphered by eye or even a computer program.
The 18th edition is improved. For example, it now includes rules about citing weblogs. However, it will take time to see if the improved rules will be helpful to researchers.
[edit] Outdated rules
Some Bluebook rules are created too long ago to be useful today. For example, Rule 14.9 in the 17th edition requires one to cite a U.S. patent in a way such as: "U.S. Patent No. 4,405,829 (issued Sept. 20, 1983)." This rule is no longer helpful after the amendment of 35 U.S.C. § 154 which has been in force since June 8, 1995. Before the amendment, a U.S. patent lasts 17 years from the date of issue; after the amendment, it is 20 years from the date of the first U.S. filing (there are many exceptions; see: Term of patent in the United States). The date of issue now becomes much less useful than the date of first U.S. filing or the priority date.
The 18th edition of The Bluebook has changed this rule, requiring the filing date instead of the issue date.
[edit] Court document citation
The system of court document citation was developed for the least-advanced typewriters. An over-burdened law clerk sitting in front of an inexpensive mechanical typewriter does not have the luxury being able to choose from various typefaces and fonts. A typewriter also does not help its user create footnotes. The development of such a different system is therefore reasonable. However, with advancement of personal computation and word processors, the progress of technologies may one day make the old system obsolete.
[edit] Inconsistency between editions
Some revisions between editions often create what are regarded as arbitrary and capricious changes that can make a legal citation mean something different between citations. An example is the change of the see signal between the 15th edition and the 16th edition. In the 15th edition, see signified that a particular source clearly supports the proposition and no signal signified that a source stated the proposition. The 16th edition changed the see signal to sources that state or support the proposition. The 17th edition changed the see signal back to the same as the 15th edition. Thus, many documents written during the time of 16th edition used see in instances in which all other editions would require use of either a see signal or no signal.
Another example is Rule 10.4 for court names and jurisdictions. In the 17th edition, Rule 10.4(b) states that for court citations, "Omit the jurisdiction if it is unambiguously conveyed by the reporter title," but the 18th edition states "Omit the jurisdiction (but not the court abbreviation) if it is unambiguously conveyed by the reporter title." Thus Dubrueil v. Witt, 80 Conn. App. 410 (2003) is the proper citation under the 17th edition and Dubreuil v. Witt, 80 Conn. App. 410 (App. Ct. 2003) is the proper citation under the 18th edition.
[edit] Challengers
To make legal citation more intuitive and logical, several other alternatives have been proposed, of which the ALWD system appears to be the most viable competitor.
[edit] Learning aids
Mary Miles Prince, the Coordinating Editor of the Bluebook, publishes a much larger book called Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Citations which contains examples of how to cite virtually every well-known legal publication in North America under the Bluebook system. The current edition of the Bluebook is included as an appendix.
Lawmanac (http://www.lawmanac.com/) also published a set of Microsoft WinHelp offline legal reference materials that includes "Legal Citation & Style: A Course for All Legal Writers and Legal-Support Staff" by C. Edward Good. This learning aid also covers ALWD.
[edit] Citation to Wikipedia
The Harvard Journal of Law and Technology has adopted the following format for citations to articles in Wikipedia:
- [Signal] Wikipedia, [article], http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/[article] [(optional other parenthetical)] (as of [date], [time] GMT).
Here is an example:
- See Wikipedia, Bluebook, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebook (describing history and application of the Bluebook) (as of Mar. 21, 2006, 20:50 GMT).
This format derives from Rule 18.2 of the 18th edition of the Bluebook, though the date parenthetical differs slightly. The parenthetical here is designed to specify the exact version of the article to which the author is referring, recognizing that articles can and do change often. The date and time used should correspond exactly to the latest version listed in the article's Wikipedia history page that states the proposition for which you are citing it. Use of GMT conforms to the timestamp format used in those history entries (e.g., use 24-hour notation to avoid AM/PM).
