Legal Research

Judge Posner Doesn?t Like the Bluebook

By Pamela

In a recent Yale Law Journal article, Judge Richard Posner slaps around the latest edition of the venerable Bluebook.  “I don?t use The Bluebook or any other form book in either my judicial opinions or my academic writings.”*  Of course, he’s a big-time federal judge (and former president of the Harvard Law Review), so he can do that.  And he’s never been much of a fan.**  But that doesn’t mean he cites sources whimsically.  He has his own, much simpler, set of guidelines.  In his view, the Bluebook elevates form over substance.  Too much attention to the minutia of punctuation and abbreviation can disguise a lack of rigorous analysis.  “I want my law clerks to spend their time doing legal research and analysis rather than obsessing over citation form.”***

*Richard Posner, The Bluebook Blues, 120 Yale L.J. 850, 853 (2011)(book review).

**See, e.g., Richard Posner, Goodbye to the Bluebook, 53 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1343 (1986).

*** Posner, supra n. * at 859.

UPDATE:  For commentary on this review and interesting discussion in the comments, see The Volokh Conspiracy blog.

[PRM]

Full post as published by Cocky Law Blawg on January 27, 2011 (boomark / email).