How to Understand & Master the Bluebook
"The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation" is a manual that sets forth the standards of style and citation to be used throughout legal writing in the United States. It covers rules for punctuation, abbreviation and, most importantly, the rules for correctly citing statutes, cases, constitutions and other legal authorities.
All law students are expected to master the Bluebook in their years of legal research. This hypertechnical text allows lawyers and law clecks to use a shorthand method that can be universally understood, to inform those who read a legal document of the nature of the particular item to which the writer is referring.
For all of the complaints about the Bluebook that have piled up over the years, it did create a stable universe, establishing the foundation for the changes in citation practice that will come.
The Bluebook has been compiled by the editors of the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and the Yale Law Journal.
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Instructions
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Take some time to get familiar with the information in the Bluebook and how that information is organized. Designed in a style according to the law journal publication process, it contains three major parts: Part I: A how-to guide for basic legal citation; Part II: The rules of citation and style; Part III: A series of tables to be used, along with rules.
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Cite according to the Bluebook. The purpose is twofold (1) to indicate to the reader that you are relying upon authority, and (2) to provide a quick way for the reader to locate the authority you relied upon. Always be sure to provide sufficient information to allow the reader to find the cited material quickly and easily.
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Use Practitioners' Style when writing memoranda, briefs or other law office documents. Get in the habit of checking the rule in the White Pages, then adapting that rule to Practitioners' Style by using the Bluepages. Do not use boldface in any part of your citations.
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Master the use of signals. This is an important step in learning to cite authorities effectively. Capitalize signals when they are used to begin citation sentences.
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Make sure you are familiar with and abide by any additional or different citation requirements of the court to which your document is being submitted. Many courts have their own rules of citation that may differ in some respects from the Bluebook. Look at Bluepages table BT 2 for an index of jurisdiction-specific citation rules and style manuals. Please note that these rules, which many states and federal courts promulgate, take precedence over Bluebook rules in documents submitted to those courts.
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Tips & Warnings
The Bluebook allows for alternatives or customary practice that may deviate from the Bluebook rules. When you are a practicing lawyer, your employer will have a preference as to which alternative to use. Just as you would check with your employer and adapt to your employer's preferred style, you should follow your instructor's preferred style.
If you omit a citation to primary authority, this tells the reader that there is no authority for what you just said. Indeed, it's wishful thinking but not the law.
Guidance for citation to Web page titles of main pages and subheadings has been expanded in the latest edition--the nineteenth--by changing Rule 18 considerably. Contemplating the increased citation to Internet sources, Rule 18.2.1 (a) now provides specific guides that allow citation of official Internet sources and exact digital scans of print sources as if they were the original print sources.
References
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