During this crisis, the publisher of The Bluebook: a Uniform System of Citations, has generously provided UW law students access to an online copy of the Bluebook. To request access to the Bluebook, please email the law library at askuwlaw@law.wisc.edu.
As law students at the UW, there any several resources that you can use to practice your citation skills online. Listed below are a few helpful resources and tips:
Research Guides
Citation Guide: Interpreting, Managing & Creating Bluebook Legal Cites : Citation & Writing Styles
Cornell's Legal Information Institute: Basic Legal Citation
Cite Checking Guide for Law Reviews & Publication: Bluebook Tips
Tips to Help Law Review Editors Tackle the Bluebook
For Bluebook practice: Use LexisNexis Interactive Citation Workstation.
- Go to http://lawschool.lexis.com, enter your id/password
- Select LexisAdvance, select the cube menu at the top left of the screen
- Select the Interactive Citation Workstation
TIPS FOR LEARNING THE BLUEBOOK
Use the Bluepages for nonacademic legal documents, court documents, use for legal research & writing
Placement of Citations
- In legal documents, citations appear within the text
- In scholarly writing, citations go in footnotes
Legal documents use
- Ordinary Roman Type
- Underscore
Scholarly writing uses
- Ordinary Roman Type
- Italics
- Small Caps (ctrl/command + Shift + k -or- Format > Font )
Rules 1-9 establish general standards of style
and citation
--Review these rules especially because they are
helpful for spotting and correcting errors in the text
Difference between Foreign Law & International Law
Rules 10-21 present rules for citation for specific kinds of authority --pay attention to the difference here
Foreign Law --Internal/domestic laws of a nation other than the United States
International Law--Law that governs the legal relations between or among nations
Bluebook Part III
Tables that show which authorities to cite and how to abbreviate them
Tables 1-5 show which authorities to cite and how to cite them
Tables 6-16 show how to abbreviate specific authorities
TIP: Use the index to quickly find the applicable rule
Know when and how to use
Id., Supra, and Short Form--Rules 4, 4.1, & 4.2
Tips for Determining Pagination Types--
Consecutive pagination usually for scholarly publications and Nonconsecutive pagination for popular practiced-based publications
For a list of nonconsecutively paginated legal journals,
see http://tinyurl.com/qyryofg
If you have any questions, please contact the law library: Research Help: by email, or by chat. Just ask!
Submitted by Jenny Zook, Reference Librarian on April 16, 2020
This article appears in the categories: Law Library