Every lawyer and law student knows about The Blue Book, that absurdly complex guide to legal citation forms inflicted on the legal community by the editors of the law reviews at Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Columbia. But how many realize that a number of citations in The Blue Book are inside jokes among the editors?
Here’s one example. On page 128 of the Seventeenth Edition — what law review editors would refer to as THE BLUEBOOK: A UNIFORM SYSTEM OF CITATION 128 (Columbia Law Review Ass’n et al. eds, 17th ed. 2000) — the following citation is offered as an example of a proper citation form for a forthcoming publication:
F. Brandon Baer & James M. Feldman, We’re Low on Vermouth: The Trials and Tribulations of Two Summer Associates, 1 J.L. & OPPRESSION (forthcoming 2001) (Manuscript at 3, on file with authors).
If you happen to have a detailed recollection of the Harvard Law School Drama Society spring parody show from 1996 — which I do, having been a cast member — you’ll get that this is a reference to at least two different jokes in that show, “Raiders of the Lost Hark.” Brandon was the producer of the show and Jamie was the director. (Neither was on law review — nor was I, for that matter — but a bunch of the cast members were.)
So here’s the question: What are the other inside jokes in The Blue Book?
On p. 83 of the 18th Edition, “Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Garodnick” appears as an example of how to cite cases.
There is no such case, to my knowledge, but…
Daniel Garodnick went to Dartmouth College and Penn Law, and was an EIC of the Penn Law Review (one of the four that works on the Bluebook).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Garodnick
Of course, there is a relatively well-known “Trustees of Dartmouth College” case, but that is Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 US 518 (1819).
On page 90 in the 18th edition, the Bluebook uses Dilucia v. Mandelker as an example. Dilucia is a real case, but in the 17th edition, the example case was Sigal v. Mandelker. Sigal Mandelker went to Penn law and was on the law review.
In the 17th edition, for one inside joke, Rule 10.2.1(d) included an example using “Czervik v. The Flying Wasp”. Czervik was Rodney Dangerfield’s character in Caddyshack, and The Flying Wasp was the Judge’s boat.
In the 18th edition, for another joke, look at the index entry on page 400 for “mistakes in quotations, indicated by ‘[sic]‘. It itself contains a “mitsake”.
Other “jokes” in the 18th edition:
* Rule 16.7(a): The second citation in “footnote” 5 contains a snarky parenthetical commenting on a piece about the University of Chicago’s Bluebook substitute.
* Rule 18.2.4: In the first example (the e-mail example), Mary Miles Prince is the coordinating editor of the Bluebook.
* Various other names are sprinkled throughout by virtue of the four law reviews’ selling Bluebook mentions for charities.
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I had wondered if there was a story behind why they picked a posting on fark.com as an example for how to cite to a blog comment.
I blogged it here
Not exactly a joke, but the public interest scholarship auction at NYU Law used to take bids on getting your name included in a cite in the next edition of the Bluebook — and NYU isn’t even one of the schools that edits the thing. I recall that it was a popular item at the auction. And no, I did not bid on it.