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Tag Archives: Legal Citations

Westlaw Poses Another Challenge To The Bluebook.

01 Sunday May 2016

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in ALWD, Citations, Legal Writing, Public Domain Citations, Research, The Bluebook, Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, Westlaw

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George Mason Law & Economics, Journal of Law: Periodical Laboratory of Legal Scholarship, Legal Citations, Ross Davies, The Bluebook, Westlaw

Journal of Law: Periodical Laboratory of Legal Scholarship, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 483-486, 2012 , by Ross Davies, George Mason University School of Law; The Green Bag (with hat tip from William P. Statsky)

http://bit.ly/24tJ2uh

Lately The Bluebook has been under siege. It has survived the long ago challenge of the ALWD Citator.  It has a new challenger, Malamud’s public source Indigo Book. Now it faces another quandary. Will it adjust or is it on its way to becoming obsolete? -CCE

 Excerpt from Abstract: 

[W]estlaw and its competitors cannot afford to conform to the Bluebook’s system when it conflicts with the requirements of their databases for, among other things, unique and recognizable abbreviations of the names of publications. And given a choice between following Bluebook form and following Westlaw form, readers and publishers are likely to follow Westlaw because that is where readers are doing more of their reading and publishers’ products are getting read.

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Bluebook Wars!

27 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Writing, The Bluebook

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Barco 2.0: Law Library Reference, Bluebook, Carl Malamud, Harvard Law School, Legal Citations, Public Resource

 

Bluebook War(s), Barco 2.0 : Law Library Reference,  from the Librarians of the Barco Law Library, University of Pittsburgh School of Law (with hat tip to William P. Statsky!)

http://bit.ly/1UwiLtp

The Bluebook, for most legal professionals, is the legal citation Bible. It is required by law schools, law libraries, and multiple state and federal courts as the required guide to legal citation. It has come under attack for its frequent revisions that contain minor changes to citation form.

Since 2009, it has also been under attack for other reasons – those who want to take it away from its current publishers and put it in the public domain. Carl Malamud of Public Resource leads the charge. -CCE

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The Origin of the Bluebook – Let’s Get The Record Straight.

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Writing, The Bluebook

≈ Comments Off on The Origin of the Bluebook – Let’s Get The Record Straight.

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Fred R. Shapiro, Julie Graves Krishnaswami, Legal Bibliography, Legal Citations, SSRN, The Bluebook

Where Did The Bluebook Originate?, by Joe Hodnicki, Law Librarians Blog

http://llb2.com/2015/12/11/where-did-the-bluebook-originate/

Ask most legal professionals where the Bluebook originated and they will likely say ‘Harvard Law School.’ In The Secret History of the Bluebook (Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 100, No. 4, 2016 Forthcoming) [SSRN], Fred R. Shapiro (Yale) and Julie Graves Krishnaswami (Yale) beg to differ. . . .

Following Yale’s lead in what we would call today, the uniform citation movement, Harvard Law School produced its own guide for the Harvard Law Review editorial staff in 1922, ‘Instructions for Editorial Work.’ Many have pointed to the Harvard document as being the precursor to the first edition of the Bluebook which was published in 1926.

*     *     *

This time around, Shapiro and Krishnaswami set the record straight about where and how this work began. Highly recommended for Bluebookologists and anyone else interested in the adoption and use of standardized citation practices and advances in legal bibliography.

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Legal Citation Honey Pot.

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in ALWD, Citations, Legal Writing, Public Domain Citations, The Bluebook

≈ Comments Off on Legal Citation Honey Pot.

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ALWD Citation Manual, Andrew Zimmerman, Bluebook, Legal Citations, State Citation Manuals, Universal Citations, Zimmerman's Research Guide

Citations, Zimmerman’s Research Guide©2015, by Andrew Zimmerman

https://law.lexisnexis.com/infopro/zimmermans/disp.aspx?z=1288

Zimmerman’s Research Guide has been around a long time, and is definitely worthy of a bookmark. Here is a very nice collection of legal citation guides that drills down a bit deeper than most. -CCE

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Link Rot – When A Hyperlink Festers and Rots.

24 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Technology, Legal Writing, Link Rot

≈ Comments Off on Link Rot – When A Hyperlink Festers and Rots.

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Jonathan Zittrain, Legal Citations, Legal Rebels Blog, Link Rot, Perma CC, Tom Majors, Victor Li

Jonathan Zittrain: Fighting ‘Link Rot’ In Court Opinions and Legal Scholarship, by Victor Li, Legal Rebels Blog (with hat tip to Tom Majors!)

http://tinyurl.com/nfrr7gm

Link rot is real. It creates havoc in court opinions that include hyperlinks. Perma.cc, unfortunately, is not the magic bullet for link rot. I have tried using it for links to this blog, only to find later that the link no longer works. Perma.cc is sorry about that, but does not have a real answer for that problem. Use it with caution. -CCE

Sure, it’s annoying when you click on a link and get that ‘404’ message or an automatic redirect to the homepage. But when it comes to legal research, dead links aren’t just annoying; they can undermine the entire premise of an opinion, article or treatise. . . .

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Have You Bought Your 20th Edition of The Bluebook®?

16 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Abbreviations, Acronyms, Citations, Footnotes, Legal Writing, Legislative History, Numbers, Parentheses, Parentheticals, Punctuation, Quotations, String Citations, The Bluebook

≈ Comments Off on Have You Bought Your 20th Edition of The Bluebook®?

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Legal Citations, The Bluebook Online®

Personally, I’m waiting for Peter Martin at Cornell to update his excellent Bluebook® Cheat Sheet. But, if you want to know all things Bluebook®, I can recommend this website – https://www.legalbluebook.com/.

This website also provides a way to buy a hard copy, which is my preference when I use it regularly. If you use The Bluebook® at all, I recommend bookmarking and browsing here the entire website and its features. Yearly subscriptions are a reasonable rate.

The good news for Bluebook® users is that, at the beginning of every new edition, there is a list of the differences between this version and the last one. Here is a preview of what is new in the 20th Edition: https://www.legalbluebook.com/Public/Updates.aspx.

Yes, you will wonder about why some of the changes were made. That is a given. But isn’t it nice to have all the changes summarized and listed for you right up front. No guessing and no reason to search the entire book to find the updates. -CCE

 

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Excellent Argument About Technology and Citation Placement.

13 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Apple, Brief Writing, Citations, E-Briefs, E-Briefs, E-Filing, Footnotes, iPad, Laptop, Legal Technology, Legal Writing, Mac, Microsoft Office, PC Computers, Readability, Tablets

≈ Comments Off on Excellent Argument About Technology and Citation Placement.

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Brian Garner, Brief Writing, Citing Legally Blog, E-Briefs, E-Filing, Legal Citations, Legal Technology, Legal Writing, Peter Martin

If the Judge Will Be Reading My Brief on a Screen, Where Should I Place My Citations? by Peter Martin, Jane M.G. Foster Professor of Law, Emeritus, Cornell Law School, Citing Legally Blog

http://citeblog.access-to-law.com/?p=149

 

As pointed out in this article, more courts require e-filing and are using tablets and other technology to read what you file. If you do not use technology, then you do not know how your document appears on the screen. It is quite different than reading something on a printed page.

So what to do? Keep writing as you always have and ignore changes brought about by technology or adjust? -CCE

A. Introduction

In a prior post I explored how the transformation of case law to linked electronic data undercut Brian Garner’s longstanding argument that judges should place their citations in footnotes. As that post promised, I’ll now turn to Garner’s position as it applies to writing that lawyers prepare for judicial readers. . . .

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Where Should Citations Go? Texas Appellate Judges Have An Opinion.

05 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Judges, Appellate Writing, Brief Writing, Citations, Footnotes, Judges, Legal Writing

≈ Comments Off on Where Should Citations Go? Texas Appellate Judges Have An Opinion.

Tags

Brian Garner, Footnotes, Legal Citations, Legal Writing, Rich Phillips, Texas Appellate Watch

The End of the Great Footnote War in Texas? by Rich Phillips, Texas Appellate Watch

http://tinyurl.com/oq8z9va

I have posted before (and here and here) about a debate that confirms that appellate lawyers are the nerds of the legal world: should citations go in footnotes or in the text?. . . .

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Using Legal Citations to Persuade the Reader.

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Analysis, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, String Citations

≈ Comments Off on Using Legal Citations to Persuade the Reader.

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Florida Bar Journal, Legal Citations, Legal Writing, Persuasive Legal Writing, Susan W. Fox, Wendy S. Loquasto

The Art of Persuasion Through Legal Citations, by Susan W. Fox and Wendy S. Loquasto, 84 Fla. B. J. 40 (2010).

http://www.floridabar.org/divcom/jn/jnjournal01.nsf/Author/A8B63DC72FCE7882852576F10068ECD6

Persuasive citation of legal authority is an essential part of legal writing. Proper citation involves knowing not only the basic form for citing cases, constitutions, statutes, rules, books, articles, and other legal authority,1 but also requires understanding the purposes and best practices for citing legal authority. The purpose of this article is to help you develop a more persuasive and effective citation style by discussing development of a citation plan, the hierarchy of authority, the role of courts and precedent; the use of pinpoint cites, parentheticals, and signals; and placement of citations.

The primary purposes of citation are support and attribution for the propositions advanced by the author. Proper citation further requires consideration of the source of the applicable law, whether the authority is binding or merely persuasive and the credibility attributable to the author or authority cited. In short, persuading a court to follow precedent, distinguish it, or overrule it — as the case requires to advance your client’s position — is in large part dependent upon credible citations and sound reasoning based upon the citations. . . .

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This Is THE Right Way To Cite to Legal Authorities.

13 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Citations, Legal Writing, Parentheticals, Readability, String Citations

≈ Comments Off on This Is THE Right Way To Cite to Legal Authorities.

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Kentucky Bar Association, Legal Citations, Legal Writing, Professor Eric Voigt, Professor Kristin J. Hazelwood, R+W Legal Consultants, SSRN

Four Tips on Citing Authority, by Professor Eric Voigt, R+W Legal Consultants

http://rwlegalconsultants.com/four-tips-on-citing-authority/

Although Professor Hazelwood of the University of Kentucky does not resolve the continuing debate between citations in the text or in footnotes, she has drafted a practical article on citing authority. Professor Hazelwood discusses four ways to unclutter your legal writing: (1) don’t string cite numerous cases for the same point; (2) place citations at the end of sentences; (3) include explanatory parentheticals with citations to further explain the relevance of the citations; and (4) avoid unnecessary repetition.

Her article was published by the Kentucky Bar Association in its monthly journal, Bench & Bar. You can read the full article on her SSRN page.

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Garner’s Ten Legal Writing Tips.

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Briefing Cases, Citations, Editing, Legal Analysis, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Proofreading, Public Domain Citations, Readability, Spell Checking, The Bluebook

≈ Comments Off on Garner’s Ten Legal Writing Tips.

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ABA Journal, Bryan Garner, Computer Legal Research, Editing, Legal Analysis, Legal Citations, Legal Writing, Proofreading

Ten Tips for Legal Writing, by Judith D. Fischer, Legal Writing Prof Blog

http://tinyurl.com/pwlxeyt

Bryan Garner’s latest article in in the ABA Journal is titled Ten Tips for Better Legal Writing. Some Garner of his tips are especially appropriate for law students, who could appropriately paste ‘Don’t rely exclusively on computer research’ on the wall by their work space. That would serve as a reminder that unfocused computer searches are like a box of chocolates–you never know what you’re going to get.  Garner also advises legal writers to be neither too tentative nor too cocksure in their conclusions, both of which are hazards for beginning law students. And Garner’s tenth tip would improve the professionalism of many a student paper: ‘Proofread one more time than you think necessary.’

 

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