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Abolish the Blue Book? Or Could We Automate It?

By Bruce Carton

Ilya Somin, an associate professor at George Mason University School of Law, says it's time to abolish the "Blue Book." For those of you who did not have the pleasure of attending law school or serving on a law review, the Blue Book is a dastardly creation that attempts to create a uniform and hyper-complex method by which lawyers are expected to cite to legal authority in briefs, articles and so on. In this post on The Volokh Conspiracy, Somin argues that the Blue Book, which he describes as a "a massive tome, over 400 pages long, with rules for every conceivable situation and some that probably are not conceivable," should be abolished and replaced "with a simple citation system such as that used in virtually every other academic field." Why? First and foremost, Somin argues, the Blue Book is "an enormous waste of time and effort." In a dead-on analysis that surely has law review editors' nodding their heads in agreement from coast-to-coast, Somin states that: Every year, law review editors across the country spend thousands of man-hours editing articles to make sure that they conform to the Blue Book rules, taking Blue Book tests, and engaging in other...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on May 21, 2010 (boomark / email).