More Bluebook Tips from BLSA Review Session

The goal of citation is to enable the reader to find the source you’re citing.  For academic legal citation, you also need to conform to The Bluebook.  There’s no magic bullet for using The Bluebook.  You just have to dig in there and find the right rule and the right preferred source for the type of authority, as well as the right abbreviations, typeface, and capitalization.  Using The Bluebook means going back and forth between the Rules and Tables.  Rules 1-9 concern general citation and style rules, such as typeface, short citations, abbreviations, and capitalization.  Rules 10-21 concern specific kinds of authority, such as cases and periodical materials.  Tables 1-4 tell you the preferred sources for types of authority for U.S. and foreign jurisdictions, intergovernmental organizations, and treaties.  Tables 5-16 tell you abbreviations for arbitral reporters (such as Arbitration Materials), case names and institutional authors, court names, explanatory phrases, legislative documents, geographical terms (such as Ohio), judges and officials, months, periodicals, publishing terms (such as volume), services (such as The United States Law Week), and subdivisions (such as paragraph).  For more information on effectively using The Bluebook, take a look at the Law Library’s Citation Checking guide.