1. Mattei, Ugo, Common Law [.] Il diritto angloamericano (Turin: UTET, 1992) at 302.Google Scholar

2. Cooper, Byron D., “AngloAmerican Legal Citation: Historical Development and Library Implications”, 75 Law Library J. 3 (1982) at 20.Google Scholar

3. Rodell, Fred, “Goodbye to Law Reviews”, 23 Va. L.R. 38 (1936) at 41.Google Scholar

4. Ibid.Google Scholar

5. Mary I. Coombs, “Lowering One's Cites: A (Sort Of) Review of the University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation”, 76 Va. L.R. 1099 (1990) at 1100, not. 4, referring to Arnold S. Jacobs, “An Analysis of Section 16 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934”, 32 N.Y.L. Sch. L.R. 209 (1987). Whether this figure has since been surpassed should appear from The National Law Journal which keeps “a running scoreboard on the law review article with the most footnotes”: Arthur D. Austin, “Footnotes as Product Differentiation”, 40 Vand. L.R. 1131 (1987) at 1141.Google Scholar

6. Mikva, Abner J., “Goodbye to Footnotes”, 56 U. Colo. L.R. 647 (1985) at 650, referring to U.S. v. E.I.duPont de Nemours & Co., 118 F. Supp. 41 (D. Del., 1953). See, for the history of some famous footnotes in the judicial opinions of the United States Supreme Court, id. at 64950.Google Scholar

7. Mikva, supra, note 6 at 648.Google Scholar

8. Supra, note 5 at 1145. See generally, on the author note, id. at 1145-47.Google Scholar

9. Id. at 1146, not. 67, referring to Robert S. Summers, “Two Types of Substantive Reasons: The Core of a Theory of CommonLaw Justification”, 63 Cornell L.R. 707 (1978).Google Scholar

10. Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal, ed., The Bluebook [:] A Uniform System of Citation, 15th ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Law Review Association, 1991) [hereinafter: Bluebook].Google Scholar

11. See, for a detailed history of the Bluebook, Cooper, supra, note 2 at 21-23.Google Scholar

12. Id. at 21, referring to Felix Frankfurter, “John Marshall and the Judicial Function”, 69 Harv. L.R. 217 (1955).Google Scholar

13. Price, Miles O., A Practical Manual of Standard Legal Citations, 2d ed. (New York: Oceana, 1958). See generally, on this citation manual, Cooper,supra, note 2 at 22-23.Google Scholar

14. See generally, on citation manuals prepared for specific jurisdictions or areas of the law, id. at 23.Google Scholar

15. See, for the current edition, The University of Chicago Law Review and The University of Chicago Legal Forum, ed., The University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation (n.pl.: The Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Co., 1989).Google Scholar

16. Editorial, “Grabbing the Hypertrophy”, The Wall Street Journal, 11 February 1987 at 26.Google Scholar

17. See, e.g., Mary Miles Price, Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Citations, 4th ed. (Buffalo: Hein, 1992); C. Edward Good, Citing & Typing the Law [:] A Guide to Legal Citation & Style (Charlottesville, Va: Legal Education Ltd, 1987); Marion D. Powers, The Legal Citation Directory (West Mantoloking, N.J.: Franas Press, 1971); Elaine C. Maier, How to Prepare a Legal Citation (Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron's, 1986).Google Scholar

18. But see, for a persuasive case against parallel citations, James D. Gordon, “Oh No! A New Bluebook!”, 90 Mich. L.R. 1698 (1992) at 1700, not. 11 [Book Review of the Bluebook].Google Scholar

19. See Coombs,supra, note 5 at 1105-11. For one author, it is “virtually impossible to comprehend footnotes that make ample use of the signals recommended by [the ‘Bluebook']”: Kenneth Lasson, “Scholarship Amok: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure”, 103 Harv. L.R. 926 (1990) at 940. Cf., for an amusing parody of introductory signals, Peter Lushing, Book Review, 67 Col. L.R. 599 (1967) at 601-02 [Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, A Uniform System of Citation, 11th ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Harvard Law Association, 1967)]. An author makes the insightful observation that signals “convey the special flavour of [a] continuous search for unity” by lawyers in that they purport somehow to reconcile all authorities around a given idea (X supports this view, Y has commented on it, Z is against it, etc.): Joseph Vining, The Authoritative and the Authoritarian (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986) at 37. See, on this point, infra at text accompanying nn. 101-05.Google Scholar

20. This discussion covers fully three pages: see Bluebook at 25-27.Google Scholar

21. For instance, it is possible to “capitalize parts of the U.S. Constitution when referring to them in textual sentences, but not in citations”: Bluebook at 51.Google Scholar

22. These rules differ for footnotes and text and are subject to no less than six exceptions: see Bluebook at 48-49.Google Scholar

23. As an author ironically reminds us, variations in typeface are apparently meant in order to avoid confusing books and articles or to make sure that we know when “see” introduces a citation and when it is used in ordinary text, that is, as a verb in an ordinary sentence: Richard A. Posner, “Goodbye to the Bluebook”, 53 U. Chi. L.R. 1343 (1986) at 1345.Google Scholar

24. Gordon, James D., “How Not to Succeed in Law School”, 100 Yale L.J. 1679 (1991) at 1692.Google Scholar

25. As regards the former point, it appears that the editors of the Bluebook finally found merit in the views of feminist legal scholars. See, for an exposition of the feminist argument, Katharine L. Bartlett, “Feminist Legal Methods”, 103 Harv. L.R. 829 (1990) at 829, not.* : “I had wanted to humanize and particularize the authors whose ideas I used in this Article by giving their first as well as last names. Unfortunately, the editors of the Harvard Law Review, who otherwise have been most cooperative, insisted upon adhering to the ‘timehonored’ Bluebook convention of using last names only, see A Uniform System of Citation 91 (14th ed. 1986), except when the writing is a ‘book', in which case the first initial is given, id. at 83, and except when the writing is by a student, in which case no name whatsoever is given (unless a student has a name like ‘Bruce Ackerman'), in which case ‘it may be indicated parenthetically,’ id. at 91, see id. In these rules, I see hierarchy, rigidity, and depersonalization, of the not altogether neutral variety. First names have been one dignified way in which women could distinguish themselves from their fathers and their husbands. I apologize to the authors whose identities have been obscured in the apparently higher goals of Bluebook orthodoxy”. But see, for an example of editorial flexibility where a law review chose not to follow Bluebook rules on authors’ names at the request of an author and agreed to use first names in full: Zipporah Batshaw Wiseman, “Women in Bankruptcy and Beyond”, 65 Ind. L.J. 107 (1989) at 107, note °. The suggestion by Posner that it is useful to have the author's full name in order to avoid confusion was derided, possibly on account of the particular example he had chosen to make his point, in Book Note, “Manual Labor, Chicago Style”, 101 Harv. L.R. 1323 (1988) at 1325-26 [reviewing R. Posner, The University of Chicago Law Review, and The University of Chicago Legal Forum, ed., The University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation [“The Maroon Book”] (Chicago: The University of Chicago Law Review, 1986). The Stanford Law Review was apparently the first to agree that the first citation of the source should include, as a matter of course, the author's full name. It took the view that “a reader's recognition of a cited author often adds to the reader's understanding of the citing writer's perspective” and felt that “citing authors’ full names [would] further the broader humanistic goal of affirming the individuality and personhood of authors published and cited in the [review]”: “President's Page”, 41 Stanf. L.R. 785 (1989) at 785.Google Scholar

26. Apparently, this exercise can matter. See, for an example of the weight given by the United States Federal Court of Appeals to a particular reference on the basis of the signal used, Coombs, supra, note 5 at 1107, not. 42, referring to Chemical Bank v. Arthur Andersen & Co., 726 F.2d 930 (1984) and, generally, at 1106-07.Google Scholar

27. The first edition of the Bluebook, released in 1926, had 26 pages. Austin draws a parallel between the inflation of the Bluebook and footnote inflation: Arthur Austin, “Footnote Skulduggery and Other Bad Habits”, 44 U. Miami L.R. 1009 (1990) at 1030.Google Scholar

28. Gordon, supra, note 18 at 1703, referring to Bluebook at 219.Google Scholar

29. Posner, supra, note 23 at 1347-48, referring to Bluebook at 189-90.Google Scholar

30. Bluebook. at 4.Google Scholar

31. Supra, note 19 at 599.Google Scholar

32. Many of those are presented by Gordon in a humorous vein, supra, note 18, passim and, in more prosaic form, by Jim C. Chen, “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue”, 58 U. Chi. L.R. 1527 (1991) at 1537-38 [Book Review of the Bluebook].Google Scholar

33. Chen, supra, note 32 at 1531.Google Scholar

34. Ibid.Google Scholar

35. Gordon, supra, note 18 at 1702.Google Scholar

36. Id. at 1703.Google Scholar

37. Chen, supra, note 32 at 1540.Google Scholar

38. Posner, supra, note 23 at 1344.Google Scholar

39. Id. at 1349. Cf.: W. Duane Benton, “Developments in the Law Legal Citation”, 86 Yale L.J. 197 (1976) at 197 [Book Review of Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Yale Law Journal, A Uniform System of Citation, 12th ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: The Harvard Law Review Association,1976)] who (ironically, I believe!) refers to “a modest quest to impose uniformity on more mundane spheres of human activity” [my emphasis].Google Scholar

40. McGill Law Journal, ed., Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 3d ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 1992). The French and English versions appear in the same book in inverted format. According to the Guide itself, twelve law reviews and the British Columbia courts have adopted it: see at iii.Google Scholar

41. Lluelles, D., Guide des références pour la rédaction juridique, 4th ed. (Montreal: Thémis, 1991); ChinShih Tang, Guide to Legal Citation and Sources of Citation Aid [:] A Canadian Perspective, 2d ed. (Don Mills, Ontario: DeBoo, 1988); Ernest Caparros and Jean Goulet, La documentation juridique (Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 1973). See, for an earlier attempt, J.W. Samuels, Legal Citation for Canadian Lawyers (Toronto: Butter worths, 1968).Google Scholar

42. See, for a detailed and learned history of English citation practices from Roman times to contemporary usages, Cooper, supra, note 2 at 4-17.Google Scholar

43. Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Manual of Legal Citations, t. I: The British Isles (London: University of London), 1959) [hereinafter: Manual]. A companion volume appeared in 1960: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Manual of Legal Citations, t. II: The British Commonwealth (London: University of London, 1960).Google Scholar

44. Manual at v.Google Scholar

45. Moys, Elizabeth M., ed., Manual of Law Librarianship, 2d ed. (Aldershot, Hants: Gower, 1987) at 154.Google Scholar

46. Out of 915 pages, Moys's Manual of Law Librarianship devotes 25 pages or parts of pages (indeed, often only a few lines per page) to citation: see id. at 79, 97-100, 109-10, 117-19, 151-57, 325-26, 406, 410-11, 417, and 500-01, covering British sources (including European Community materials), civil law sources, and statutes from Ireland and the United States. See also R.G. Logan, ed., Information Sources in Law (London: Butterworths, 1986) at 56-58, on citation of English cases (within the context of a brief essay by Adrian Blunt, “Case law”). It remains to mention Donald Raistrick, Index to Legal Citations and Abbreviations (Abingdon, Oxon.: Professional Books, 1981). Despite its title, this book offers 326 pages of abbreviations and has nothing to say on citation.Google Scholar

47. I must stress that my work is not that of an expert in library science. I do not seek to determine whether citation practices in use in England conform to received standards for bibliographic references, for instance by ensuring that “[r]eferences to works at the analytic level […] always include bibliographic elements that describe the, next higher bibliographic level of which it forms a part (monographic or collective level)”: Cooper, supra, note 2 at 9 referring to the American National Standards Institute's American National Standard for Bibliographic References. While I do not wish to deny the interest of such investigation, it is simply not the point of the report.Google Scholar

48. Supra, note 23 at 1345, not. 5.Google Scholar

49. [1993] Camb. L.J. 187.Google Scholar

50. See generally Austin, supra, note 5 at 1136 and references cited.Google Scholar

51. Cronin, Blaise, The Citation Process (London: Taylor Graham, 1984) at 5.Google Scholar

52. Id. at 28.Google Scholar

53. Mellinkoff, David, Legal Writing: Sense and Nonsense (New York: Scribner, 1982) at 94.Google Scholar

54. Supra, note 5 at 1135Google Scholar

55. Supra, note 3 at 41.Google Scholar

56. AxelLute, Paul, “Legal Citation Form: Theory and Practice”, 75 Law Library J. 148 (1982) at 148.Google Scholar

57. Supra, note 51 at 53.Google Scholar

58. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream [:] The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) at 220.Google Scholar

59. See Perelman, C., Logique juridique [.] Nouvelle rhétorique (Paris: Dalloz, 1976), no. 51, p. 107.Google Scholar

60. Paul Orianne, “Préface”, in Léon Ingber, ed., Guide des citations, références et abréviations juridiques (Brussels: StoryScientia/Bruylant, 1990) at vi.Google Scholar

61. Supra, note 53 at 94. The perception of the note as presenting a more minor discourse emerges clearly from an observation in Jeffrey O'Connell, “Bhopal, the Good Lawyer, and the American Law School: A Torts (and Insurance) Professor's Perspective”, 36 J. Leg. Educ. 311 (1986) at 315: “In his learned paper, Marc Galanter takes me to task a little by suggesting in a footnote (that is how seriously he takes me) that I overlook the fact that […]” [my emphasis].Google Scholar

62. Posner, supra, note 23 at 1344.Google Scholar

63. Ibid.Google Scholar

64. Ibid.Google Scholar

65. Cramton, Roger C., “‘The Most Remarkable Institution': The American Law Review”, 36 J. Leg. Educ. 1 (1986) at 5.Google Scholar

66. Gordon, supra, note 18 at 1702-03.Google Scholar

67. Carbonnier, Jean, “Préface”, in Michel Gendrel, Dictionnaire des principaux sigles utilisés dans le monde juridique (Paris: Les Cours de Droit, 1980) at i [“(l)es sigles juridiques, c'est l'ésotérisme à la puissance 2”].Google Scholar

68. Cf., in favour of standardization, AxelLute, supra, note 56 at 149.Google Scholar

69. Supra, note 13 at iii. See also AxelLute,supra, note 56 at 148.Google Scholar

70. Cf. Posner, supra, note 23 at 1344.Google Scholar

71. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (New York: Warner, 1984) at xv [originally published in Italian in 1980].Google Scholar

72. Smith, David E.B., “Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Into the Bluebook: Notes on the Fifteenth Edition”, 67 Chi.K. L.R. 275 (1991) at 275 and 276, not. 8, respectively [Book Review of Bluebook].Google Scholar

73. Rodell, Fred, “Goodbye to Law Reviews Revisited”, 48 Va. L.R. 279 (1962) at 288.Google Scholar

74. Williamson, Linda E., “A Proposal for Achieving Uniformity in the Citation of International Documents”, 9 Int'l J. of Law Libraries 47 (1981).Google Scholar

75. Cooper, supra, note 2 at 31.Google Scholar

76. Chen, supra, note 32 at 1527.Google Scholar

77. Weir, Tony, “The Common Law System”, in International Encyclopedia of Comparative Law, t. II: The Legal Systems of the World [.] Their Comparison and Unification, ed. by René David, c. 2: Structure and the Divisions of the Law (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, [1974]), no. 82, p. 77.Google Scholar

78. See Robert W. Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories”, 36 Stanford L.R. 57 (1984) at 90; Geoffrey Wilson, “English Legal Scholarship”, (1987) 50 Modern L.R. 818 at 830-31.Google Scholar

79. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, t. I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979) at 74 [originally published in 1765].Google Scholar

80. See Bluebook at 148-49 and 159-60 (European Community law) and 131-39 (French and English law). Reasonably enough, some American scholars in contact with foreign legal cultures are keen to resist such chauvinism. See,e.g., George A. Bermann et al., Cases and Materials on European Community Law (St. Paul: West, 1993) at xv: “We deliberately do not follow the ‘Bluebook’ citation forms, either for judgments, legislation or other materials. Our citation forms are adapted from those commonly used by European writers and are designed to provide maximum clarity in use”.Google Scholar

81. Rodell,supra, note 70 at 289.Google Scholar

82. Cronin, supra, note 51 at 33.Google Scholar

83. Sennett, Richard, Authority (New York: Norton, 1980) at 15.Google Scholar

84. Supra, note 19 at 188-89.Google Scholar

85. Id. at 189.Google Scholar

86. Supra, note 58 at 252.Google Scholar

87. Balkin, J.M., “The Footnote”, 83 Northwestern U. L.R. 275 (1989) at 278.Google Scholar

88. Id. at 279.Google Scholar

89. Vining, supra, note 19 at 189. This observation verifies itself beyond the law. See Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. by Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981) at 342 [originally published in Russian in 1975].Google Scholar

90. Vining, supra, note 19 at 188.Google Scholar

91. The Digest of Justinian, ed. by Theodor Mommsen, Paul Krueger and Alan Watson, t. I (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), Tanta, § 10 at lix. See H.F. Jolowicz and B. Nicholas, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law, 3d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) at 488.Google Scholar

92. Supra, note 83 at 18-19 and 19, respectively.Google Scholar

93. Id. at 25.Google Scholar

94. Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), bk IV, c. 17 at 686 [originally published in 1689].Google Scholar

95. Novick, supra, note 58 at 221.Google Scholar

96. Edward, W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993) at 42.Google Scholar

97. This trend should become even more pronounced if Steyn L.J.'s admonitions are acted upon: see White v. Jones, [1993] 3 All E.R. 481 (C.A.) at 500.Google Scholar

98. Yeats, W.B., The Poems, ed. by Daniel Albright (London: Dent: 1990) at 263 [“Among School Children”, originally published in 1927]:Google Scholar

How can we know the dancer from the dance?Google Scholar

99. Merryman, John Henry, “Toward a Theory of Citations: An Empirical Study of the Citation Practice of the California Supreme Court in 1950, 1960, and 1970”, 50 S. Cal. L.R. 381 (1977) at 394.Google Scholar

100. Id. at 394, not. 10.Google Scholar

101. Supra, note 51 at 5.Google Scholar

102. Supra, note 83 at 18.Google Scholar

103. Pierre Bourdieu, Leçon sur la leçon (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1982) at 52 [“(c)iter, (…) c'est ressusciter”].Google Scholar

104. Supra, note 87 at 278.Google Scholar

105. Vining, supra, note 19 at 37.Google Scholar

106. Supra, note 58 at 221.Google Scholar

107. Rodell, supra, note 3 at 38.Google Scholar

108. Cronin, supra, note 51 at 6.Google Scholar

109. Id. at 9.Google Scholar

110. Arthur Austin, “Political Correctness Is a Footnote”, 71 Oregon L.R. 543 (1992) at 558.Google Scholar

111. Montaigne, “Essais”, in Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat, ed., Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), bk III, c. 13 at 1063 [originally published in 1580] (“On se doit adonner aux meilleures regles, mais non pas s'y asservir, si ce n'est à celles, s'il y en a quelqu'une, ausquelles l'obligation et servitude soit utile”).Google Scholar