The Bluebook: a summary

Every law student, in in the first few weeks, is introduced to the infamous bluebook, the so-called “uniform system of citation.” This wonderfully opaque book (which, I must admit, does actually have a good index) is compiled by the editors of law reviews at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania. I don’t know if you noticed, but that list was missing an author. Presumably, either no single person wanted to take credit (kind of like the Alan Smithee of the legal field) or, more likely, because there never was one. It sure feels that way sometimes.

Furthering the suspicion that committees of attorneys have an imagination defect, they entitled this monstrosity The Bluebook, creating one of those questions for the ages: what came first, the cover or the name?

The Bluebook editors (hereafter called B.b. E. out of malice—notice my liberal use of periods and spaces in that abbreviation) must have stock in a period company somewhere. For when in doubt, they believe that any citation becomes more official when periods are added to the middle. Southern District of New York becomes S.D.N.Y. and Federal Supplement becomes F. Supp. Virtually all (but not all, for that would be a uniform rule) abbreviations get periods. Avenue becomes Ave., but Association becomes Ass’n (no period). Rumor has it that in an early edition of the Bluebook, some poor B.b. E. tried to abbreviate Association as Ass’n., but the period and the apostrophe got in a big spat and messed up everyone’s abbreviations. An entire issue of the Harvard Law Review (Harv. L. Rev.) was nearly lost, and periods and apostrophes are now used liberally as part of the classified settlement agreement, but kept apart with things like extra spaces.

Which brings me to the next topic

Spaces likewise are to be irregularly (but uniformly) used, although not quite a liberally as periods. Citing to a district court gets you the abbreviation D.C., but if it’s the district of Massachusetts, you abbreviate D. Mass. (space between). Likewise, the Federal Reporter 3rd Series gets abbreviated F.3d, but the Federal Supplement 2nd Series gets abbreviated F. Supp.2d. (<-- that period is for the end of the sentence, not for the citation. These citations don’t have periods at the end, just in the middle.) I’ve even had assignments that called for slashes (/) instead of spaces, just so the grader can make sure I'm using enough spaces/./././because that looks so much better than … And then you get rules like this: “In abbreviations of personal names, close up all adjacent single capitals except when one or more of the capitals refers to the name of an institutional entity, in which case set the capital or capitals referring to the entity off from other adjacent single capitals with a space.” Seriously? I’ve seen clearer courtship policies. “Hey all you capitals, if you’re single, no hand holding while walking.” There, that covered it.

The biggest excitement for B.b. Es., however, must come from abbreviations. For they’re always lurking and threatening to jump out at you.

Lots of words get abbreviated. You know, Government becomes Gov’t, Director becomes Dir., Insurance becomes Ins., Rehabilitation becomes Rehab., Reproductive becomes Reprod. (wait what? Reprod.? What does that mean?), and the list goes on. Railroad becomes R.R., but Railway becomes Ry. Advertising becomes Adver. Both America and American become Am. Both Telephone and Telegraph become Tel. Product and Production both become Prod. Corporation becomes Corp., but should be dropped entirely if it is otherwise clear that the party is a company. Whether that is clear or not is up to your discretion. Your discretion is usually wrong. In all, there are 174 arbitrary words on this list with mandatory abbreviations, and any other words of over eight letters should be abbreviated “if substantial space is thereby saved and the result is unambiguous in context” (emphasis in original). Again, this is left to discretion (see above).

However, that list is only applicable for words appearing in citations after sentences. If the citation appears within the sentence, it is not abbreviated unless it is a “wildly known acronym” (we’ll come back to this) or makes it to the elite eight list of words that still get abbreviated—except if they are the first word in the name. Association (Ass’n) is one such word, which makes the hypothetical “Association of Builders” used in a sentence an exception to the exception to the exception to the rule. (Rule: abbreviate; exception: used in sentence, don’t abbreviate; exception: Association is a special word, always abbreviate; exception: fist word, don’t abbreviate.)

And speaking of known acronyms, well known acronyms like AARP, CBS, and CIA get abbreviated without periods or spaces. But United States does not unless used as an adjective, and then it keeps the periods, becoming U.S.

States are also abbreviated. But standard postal abbreviations aren’t good enough for the B.b. Es. True, some are kept in a remotely familiar form, such as Ky. Or., and Vt. Others, like Okla., Tenn. and Wash., however, must be more spelled out. Short state names like Ohio, Iowa, and Utah, are not abbreviated at all, but Tex. and Me. are (but Idaho is strangely not—making it another of those exceptions to the exception ./././).

Cities, however, are abbreviated only if they are fortunate enough to fall on the elite list of 11. Dallas made it, becoming Dall. and losing the “as” in favor of a “.” to be shortened by one entire character. (See, periods sneak in everywhere.) Should your case involve Cincinnati, though, you’ll need to spell it out entirely. It must not have bribed the B.b. Es. enough or some other unthinkable horror.

This “Uniform System of Citation” is now in its nineteenth edition has been persecuting law students for decades. Maybe that’s why many courts don’t use it, instead writing their own citation preferences in their local rules. Oh well, at least I’m learning how to cite for law journal articles.

What! There’s a whole separate section on that??