Legal Commentary

Posting of Jack M. Balkin, to Balkinization, http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/06/winners-constitutions.html (June 7, 2007, 5:50 EST).

This is the wrong way to cite a blog. It does not tell you what the posting is about. Here is a much better way:

Jack M. Balkin, "Winner?s Constitutions," Balkinization, http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/06/winners-constitutions.html (June 7, 2007)(last visited May 5, 2008).

That is, you should cite to a blog post much as you would cite to a newspaper article or op-ed. These also appear online, and at this point there is little reason to treat them differently. If the blog post doesn't have a title, the "Posting of X to Y" format works fine. But it makes little sense for the vast majority of blog posts that anyone would ever want to cite to. These posts are generally little essays, not much different from articles you would find in any newspaper or magazine. Blog posts now are as long or longer than op-eds and newspaper articles; some of them are thousands of words long, and they should be treated pretty much the same way.

I'd be very interested in how the Blue Book and the Maroon Book differ in this respect. And, of course, I would prefer that both of them move to something like the format that I have suggested.

Full post as published by Balkinization on May 05, 2008 (boomark / email).