Posner's Critique of the Bluebook (w/ In-Text Bluebook Citations)

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In his thorough analysis of the Bluebook, Posner presents us with an overall solid and convincing critique of the pedantic rules and regulations that encompass legal writing. He gives us two main reasons why modern legal writing needs a reformation, and why the Bluebook needs a new and improved successor. These two main reasons, or critiques, include the tedious rules enforced upon legal citation and the overall style enforced upon legal writing in general.

Posner's strongest argument against the Bluebook revolves around the nature of its legal citation rules, which is broken down into smaller parts. First, Posner critiques the Bluebook for enforcing a rule that forces the writer to abbreviate the name of an author of an article or book down to their last name. Richard A. Posner, Goodbye to the Bluebook, 53 U.Chi.L.Rev. 1343, 1345 (1986). He believes that the full name of the author should be written to avoid confusion, since many authors share a similar last name. Id. Next, Posner continues his analyses by exposing the overly elaborate uniformity necessary to cite in law reviews. For example, he notes the tediousness of having to differentiate small and large capitals for books, italics for articles, etc. Id. Afterwards, he gives us a brief list of unnecessary notations and dates needed for statutes and law reports. Id. at 1346. The rest of his critique of law citation revolves around this same concept: unnecessary, redundant, and tedious uniformity. In his own words, "The time that law students and lawyers spend mastering and applying the manifold rules of the Bluebook is time taken away from other lawyerly activities, mainly from thinking about what they are writing." Id. at 1349. In other words, the complicated and time-consuming nature of the Bluebook, especially with regards to citation, needs to be broken down into a simple more easily digestible set of rules, so that legal professionals can focus more on the content of their work rather than the format. I believe that this is Posner's strongest argument against the Bluebook, due to the amount of evidence that he has against it.

Secondly, Posner's weakest, yet still very valid, of the two critiques revolves around the legal writing style itself. He states, "The Bluebook creates an atmosphere of formality and redundancy in which the drab, Latinate, plethoric, euphemistic style of law reviews and judicial opinions flourishes." Id. In his following statement, he explains that the lessons given by English teachers and the practices used by great writers is completely flipped upside down when it comes to legal writing. Id. For example, legal writing style justifies the excessive use of passive voice, vagueness, nominalizations, euphemisms, long textual footnotes, cross-references, wordiness, and archaic legalisms. Id. at 1350. Though Posner does make an excellent case against the legal writing style presented in the Bluebook, I do believe that this is his weakest argument out of the two, since the basis of this critique rests upon his opinion and his personal distaste for this particular writing style.

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