Monday, December 08, 2008

LOL law review piece

The Autumn 2008 issue of the Green Bag arrived in Casa CAAFlog's mailbox today. The issue concludes with a Yale Law 3L's laugh out loud 8-page poem extolling The Bluebook. Michael Coenen, Rhapsody in Blue: An Ode to The Bluebook, 12 Green Bag 2d 115 (2008). The poem marches through each Bluebook rule and table, even devoting a quatrain to its index. Here, for example, is the poem's description of Tables 9 and 10:

T9: Here's Legislative Docs!
Off it will knock my Bluebook socks!
T10: Terms of Geography:
My state is "Conn." and not "CT."

The poet drops 17 footnotes, the first of which cites The Bluebook, thereinafter short formed as "Baby Blue." These footnotes, such as note 8's theorizing about the correct abbreviation of "abbreviation," may be even funnier than the poem they annotate.

We should have a CAAFlog contest asking contestants to predict when the first law review article, comment, or note will cite the poem.
Posted by Dwight Sullivan at 9:42 PM

4 comments:

Christopher Mathews said...

We should have a CAAFlog contest asking contestants to predict when the first law review article, comment, or note will cite the poem.

Think big. We should have a contest asking folks to predict when the first CCA opinion citing the poem will appear.

If I had to guess, I'd predict it would be written by Judge Gary Jackson. The man's got a sense of humor.

Tue Dec 09, 01:18:00 AM EST
Cloudesley Shovell said...

The poem does a good job of pointing out two essential truths:

1) "Baby Blue" is ridiculously over-complex. Only a committee of lawyers, working for years, could generate a book hundreds of pages long describing how to abbreviate legal citations.

2) There's a Yale 3L out there with WAY too much free time.

Tue Dec 09, 08:36:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...

Another bright mind lost to "the law" when it might have potentially contributed something much more valuable to our society.

Tue Dec 09, 09:22:00 PM EST
Anonymous said...

CAAFlog, on a tangentially relatated item: Did you see the piece in the New York Times about the study documenting how law clerks influence the outcome of cases? The article reported the study, but did not deeply analyze the obvious "self-selection" bias.

Wed Dec 10, 01:46:00 AM EST

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