Search Results for “bluebook”

The Volokh Conspiracy » Judge Posner Criticizes the Bluebook (the Most Popular Legal Citation Format Manual)

26 January, 2011

Eugene Volokh • January 25, 2011 5:32 pm

The article is The Bluebook Blues, published in the Yale Law Journal, which is one of the journals that publishes the Bluebook itself. The review is short (a bit over 10 pages of text) and very readable. An excerpt:

Many years ago I wrote a review of The Bluebook, then in its sixteenth edition. My review was naïvely entitled “Goodbye to the Bluebook.” The Bluebook was then a grotesque 255 pages long. It is now in its nineteenth edition — which is 511 pages long.

I made a number of specific criticisms of The Bluebook in that piece, and I will not repeat them. I don’t believe that any of them have been heeded, but I am not certain, because, needless to say, I have not read the nineteenth edition. I have dipped into it, much as one might dip one’s toes in a pail of freezing water. I am put in mind of Mr. Kurtz’s dying words in Heart of Darkness — “The horror! The horror!” — and am tempted to end there.

via volokh.com

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Irish Law Journal, volume 2

11 March, 201311 March, 2013

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| General

Late to this, with apologies, I am told that the Irish Law Journal is still (just about) accepting submissions (email here) for its second edition. Submissions should be no more then 25,000 words in length, on any matter of law. According to its submissions page:

The Irish Law Journal strives to publish novel scholarship that will have an immediate and lasting impact on the legal community in Ireland and abroad. We invite articles from academics, professionals and students of law or related disciplines. Case comments and book reviews will also be accepted. While each issue might have articles focused on Irish law, the journal’s remit is international and we welcome submissions on all areas of the law irrespective of national boundaries.

I think that this is an excellent endeavour, adding to the range of journals available in Ireland. They largely fall into two parts: student run for student publication, and more professional or academic for professional or academic publication. The Irish Law Journal crosses this divide: it is student-run and student-edited, but seeking to publish professional and academic pieces. Not only will such a journal publish valuable new legal research, it will also help in the development of law students.…

Parenthetically speaking: paragraph numbers in Irish judgments

25 February, 2011

| 4 Comments

| Irish Law

Paragraph brackets Paul McMahon on Ex Tempore has an excellent post this morning musing on the use of paragraph numbers in judgments in the Supreme Court. He thinks they’re rather unattractive, but useful. I think his aesthetic objections are misplaced, but I agree with him that they are useful, and I think that the sooner Irish judgments come into line with this best practice elsewhere, the better.

I’m not sure that the absence of paragraph numbers in US judicial opinions is for reasons of sytle. There is much that is ugly about formal US opinion writing, some (much?) of it driven by the Bluebook, some simply a matter of history. The absence of paragraph numbers reflects the assumption that the judgment will be reported very quickly by West in an appropriate volume of their national reporter system, so that the page number will provide the appropriate pin cite.

However, the rise of the paragraph number in judgments outside the US is a function of the rise of medium-neutral reporting and citation. The Austlii/ Bailii/ Canlii (etc) style of citation – [year] court (case no) [para] – makes it easy to pinpoint the relevant citation whatever the medium of publication: html, pdf, or traditional dead-tree law report.…

Too many guides, not enough style

30 August, 201027 August, 2010

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| law school, Legal Education, Legal Journals and Law Reviews

My previous post on the advent of the Irish Law Journal led to some quite interesting discussion about the nature of citation styles and how crowded the market for legal journals in Ireland is.

By way of supplement, I see that 15 Lambton Quay records the final publication of New Zealand’s uniform style guide. I blogged about it at the proposal stage here. Up until now, Law schools, law firms, publishers and courts have been using their own idiosyncratic and confusing styles when referring to legal material. Now, New Zealand’s six law schools, three main legal publishers, major law reviews, and a number of courts, including the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal, have adopted the guide this year. From the 15 Lambton Quay website [with added links]:

The Guide was launched by Justice John McGrath. A uniform guide has been a long time coming! .. The new guide is the result of the combined efforts of many across the profession. Justice Chambers of the Court of Appeal spearheaded the project … The guide was only made possible through generous funding from the New Zealand Law Foundation. …

A web-based version of the guide has been made available on the New Zealand law Foundation’s website.…

A new development in Irish legal journal publishing

25 August, 20103 February, 2013

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| Irish Law, Legal Journals and Law Reviews

In the US, most law journals are run and edited by law students; every law school publishes its flagship law review; and many publish specialist journals as well. Outside the US, most law journals are run and edited by law faculty, and published by legal publishers. Moreover, outside the US, whilst student-edited journals publishing articles written by students are not uncommon, student-edited journals in the US sense, publishing articles written by academics, have been slow to take hold.

Hence, in Ireland, there are many traditional journals; and the student law reviews include the Cork Online Law Review, the Galway Student Law Review, the Irish Student Law Review, the Trinity College Law Review, and the UCD Law Review. Now, hot on the heels of the publication of the first volume of the Irish Journal of Legal Studies, I learn of the appearance of the Irish Law Journal, edited, run and published by students in the Department of Law at NUI Maynooth.

They aim to constitute a valuable academic resource providing a platform for discussion and debate by publishing novel scholarship that will have an immediate and lasting impact on the legal community in Ireland and abroad.…

Canadian style

3 November, 20092 November, 2009

| 1 Comment

| Law, Legal Journals and Law Reviews

No, this isn’t a post about the Canadian blog and magazine Precedent: The new rules of law and style. Instead – following on from my posts about OSCOLA (here), the infamous Bluebook (here), minimalist styles for online journals (here), and an emerging Kiwi style (here) – this is a rather belated comment on a post by Simon Fodden on Slaw:

University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation Online

The newest version of the University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation, known as the Maroonbook, is available online in PDF. This brief — 77 page — competitor to the Bluebook is not directly applicable to us here in Canada, of course, but may assist with material filed in the United States. And it serves to remind us that we, too, ought to have available to us a free, online manual.

We’ve mooted this on Slaw a number of times, and, if some irons I’ve got in the fire at the moment get hot in the next few weeks, I’ll have more to say on a possible Slaw project to create such a manual.

Of interest, perhaps, is the fact that the Maroonbook advises us to “[o]mit periods and apostrophes whenever possible.”

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Towards an All Black Book?

13 August, 200915 August, 2009

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| Law, Legal Journals and Law Reviews

By way of update to my post on Legal Citation, I note that Geoff McLay on 15 Lambton Quay (the Faculty Blog for the Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Law) writes:

The proposed uniform legal style guide for New Zealand

A group of academics, editors and publishers led by myself and Justice Chambers has been developing a uniform New Zealand legal style guide. We hope that the guide will adopted by all New Zealand publishers, law schools and courts. We have released a consultation version. Any comments would be gratefully received and may be sent to Geoff McLay. The project has been supported by the New Zealand Law Foundation.

Will there be lots of full stops? Given that the dominant US style is the Blue Book, perhaps we should call any New Zealand style guide the All Black Book?

Bonus link: Gary Slapper has an entertaining Summer Quiz in today’s Times.…