

Also, when citing cases, you will have to consult several tables (1, 6, 7 and 10) to get information on abbreviations (reporter, terms, court and geographical names), preferred sources and lists of courts in each state. The full information on citing cases is provided in Rule 10 of the Bluebook Guide. It includes the following mandatory elements:įor academic documents, case names need no additional formatting, while in court documents, they are italicized or underlined. The format of doing citations for cases depends on the type of the case, the court, and the jurisdiction. Here, we will provide some Bluebook 20th edition examples of formatting for legal and academic documents to help you better understand the fundamentals of legal citing. It was revised in 1990, 1991, 1996, 2000, 2005, 20 and is currently in its 20th edition.Īs it has already been mentioned, the Bluebook style guide is now in its 20th edition and has dedicated sections for different types of documents. The guide is published by law editors of Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale. Index designed to help you find the rules you need.The tables section with information on authorities that have to be cited and abbreviations to be used.The full rules of citation and style (21 rule in the current edition).Bluepages (information about basic legal citation) which is designed to be an easy-to-use, condensed version of the entire manual.In fact, the Bluebook is so widespread and ubiquitous that a new word has been created – “bluebooking,” which means citing sources in full accordance with the style guide’s norms.Īlternative citation systems exist and are also used in some jurisdictions, but the Bluebook remains the most frequently used one. law schools and provides information on citations, typefaces, subdivisions, quotations, abbreviations, special symbols, capitalizations, titles, and so on. Whatever the origin, however, today the Bluebook is used by the majority of U.S. Llewellyn on how to write law materials for the Yale Law Journal. Recent studies, however, argue that the style was born in Yale with the publication of Karl N.


Usually, the Bluebook referencing style is traced to a pamphlet by Erwin Griswold, the editor of Harvard Law Review, on how to properly cite law articles.
