Tcl - the Bluebook No. 18 - Thank God for Competition. . . . - November 2005 - the Scrivener: Modern Legal Writing

• Publication year: 2005
• Pages: 111
• Citation: Vol. 34 No. 11 Pg. 111

34 Colo.Law. 111 Colorado Bar Journal 2005.

2005, November, Pg. 111. TCL - The Bluebook No. 18 - Thank God for competition. . . . - November 2005 - The Scrivener: Modern Legal Writing

The Colorado Lawyer
November 2005
Vol. 34, No. 11 [Page 111]

Departments and More
The Scrivener: Modern Legal Writing
The Bluebook No. 18 - "Thank God for competition . ."
by K.K. DuVivier

K.K. DuVivier is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Lawyering Process Program at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.

DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT LEGAL WRITING? K.K. DuVivier will be happy to address them through the Scrivener column. Send your questions to: kkduvivier@law.du.edu or call her at (303) 871-6281.

The Eighteenth Edition of The Bluebook1 is now available, and thanks to competition from the ALWD Citation Manual ("ALWD Manual"),2 this version is better than ever for practitioners. In the words of Gil Atkinson, "Thank God for competition. When our competitors upset our plans or outdo our designs, they open infinite possibilities of our own work to us."3

The Bluebook Before Competition

The First Edition of The Bluebook was published in 1926. Since that time, the student editors of the law reviews at Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale have issued a new iteration of this time-honored authority every few years. The Introduction to the new edition touts The Bluebook as the "definitive style guide for legal citation in the United States,"4 and many would agree.

The Preface to the Eighteenth Edition references more than forty modifications of tables or rules since the previous edition,5 but none of the changes in citation form seem as radical as those made in 1996. In that year, the Sixteenth Edition rattled the citation world with changes such as the revision to Rule 1.2, which addresses the use of introductory signals.6 Before 1996, for example, the signal "see" was appropriate when the writer made "an inferential step between the authority cited and the proposition it support[ed]."7 The Sixteenth Edition turned this definition around when it stated that "see" meant the "[c]ited authority directly states or clearly supports the proposition."8 (Emphasis in original.) The uproar over such changes led The Bluebook editors in the Seventeenth Edition to "reinstate" the Fifteen Edition version of Rule 1.2.9

The Bluebook was created by and for law reviews. For the first fifty-five years of its...