The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation exemplifies hypertrophy in the anthropological sense. It is a monstrous growth, remote from the functional need for legal citation forms, that serves obscure needs of the legal culture and its student subculture. . . .

There is an argument for a uniform understanding of signals of case authority (such as “accord,” “see,” “see also,” “cf.,” “but see,” “contra”), and The Bluebook offers a set of definitions. In fact there is little uniformity in the use of the signals by law clerks and other legal writers. The Bluebook’s effort is unobjectionable and takes up little space, so I am not disposed to criticize it. But what is the point of such rules as that “[i]n law review footnotes, a short form for a case may be used if it clearly identifies a case that (1) is already cited in the same footnote or (2) is cited (in either full or short form, including ‘id.’) in one of the preceding five footnotes. Otherwise a full citation is required.” This reads like a parody, but is not. There are more than 150 pages of such “rules.” . . .

In my 1986 review of the sixteenth edition of The Bluebook I summarized my criticisms as follows:

The particular faults of the Bluebook . . . place it in the mainstream of American legal thought. Like many of the judicial opinions and law review articles whose citation forms it dictates, the Bluebook is elaborate but not purposive. Form is prescribed for the sake of form, not of function; a large structure is built up, all unconsciously, by accretion; the superficial dominates the substantive. The vacuity and tendentiousness of so much legal reasoning are concealed by the awesome scrupulousness with which a set of intricate rules governing the form of citations is observed.

I am not alone in these criticisms; much of the vast literature of commentary on The Bluebook is critical. But there is not much root-and-branch criticism. Most critics accept the basic premises of The Bluebook, fuss over details, and don’t worry that “bluebooking” involves an expenditure of time that would be better devoted to legal education or practice. I want my law clerks to spend their time doing legal research and analysis rather than obsessing over citation form.