When writing for a law review, I like to submit a manuscript with reasonably polished footnotes. I’ll probably never get the footnotes 100% accurate; there are too many “dusty corners” in the bluebook citation system for that. But I try to get the basics correct. To help me do that, I’ve created an online tool for generating footnotes in Bluebook format.
Even the basics of Bluebook formatting for law reviews are not easy to implement. For example …
- The signal “E.g.” is italicized, but the comma immediately afterward is not italicized.
- When citing a journal article, the author’s name is in regular type. However, when citing a book, the author’s name is in small caps.
- When citing an opinion published in a reporter, the year is noted. However, when citing an opinion available only in Westlaw, the full date is required. And when citing a court document retrieved from PACER, even more information is required.
Creating footnotes in this format is tedious, and proofreading them is difficult. (“Is that period italicized?”) To make this process easier and more accurate, I’ve created this webpage. It takes care of the basics of Bluebook footnotes, such as the bullet points listed above. I created this webpage to support my writing for law reviews, so it makes no attempt to create citations in the format used in court documents and practitioner memos (“the blue pages”). The 20th edition of the Bluebook comes in at 560 pages, so a computerized system to do everything would probably be too complicated to actually use. My webpage is simple, and it’s designed to create basic footnotes in the correct format, ready to paste directly into a Word footnote. More complicated footnotes (e.g., advanced parentheticals) are left to human tweaking.
The space at the top of the web page is simply a scratch pad for working with citation information. I found during my own use that it’s convenient to have a place to “paste to” and “copy from” that has no actual influence on the citation that’s generated.
I also included some notes at the bottom of the webpage. For example, I can never remember whether it’s “F.Supp.2d” or “F. Supp. 2d”. (It is the latter. Those extra spaces don’t make sense to me because “F.2d” and “U.S.P.Q.2d” are correct. Hey, the bluebook is what it is. In fact, the full Bluebook might be an effective counter to the argument of Solipsism. I mean, if everyone else in the world were a figment of my own imagination, would it really be possible for me to imagine the Bluebook in all its astonishing specificity? I doubt it.)
– Eric DeRosia