|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| FEATURED ARTICLE |
|
Meet ALWD: The New Citation Manual
By Wayne Schiess © 2001 Do you know citation? Take this test:
Perhaps practitioners don’t know as much about citation as they might. If they don’t, one reason is The Bluebook itself. Notoriously tedious, hard to use, and ever-changing, The Bluebook is still the standard manual for citation form. Because it is supposed to be uniform, practitioners frequently assume that what they learned about citation in law school will serve them throughout their careers. So they do not keep up with changes in The Bluebook because they assume — wrongly, it turns out — that there won’t be many changes. Plus, The Bluebook is difficult to read, use, and understand. So practitioners, who have better things to do, do not stay up on it. Things may be about to change. In this article, I introduce the latest and most viable alternative to The Bluebook, the ALWD Citation Manual. First, some history. Before ALWD — Bluebook Criticisms The Bluebook has been much criticized, and here are the primary criticisms:
The idea for the new ALWD Citation Manual came from the Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD or “all-wid”). The group has more than 200 members from approximately 150 law schools and is a “professional association of program directors for legal research, writing, analysis, and advocacy curricula from law schools throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia.”1 The members of ALWD were frustrated by having to teach citation out of The Bluebook, tired of the pointless and confusing changes in each edition of The Bluebook, and annoyed at being ignored in their efforts to get The Bluebook editors to explain or fix the changes in the see signal. So the members of ALWD formed a committee and selected a person to write a new citation manual. The primary goals for the new manual were to create a system that did not change with each edition, to make the manual a teaching tool, and to make the citation system internally consistent and sensible. Thus the ALWD Manual was to be a restatement with modest refinements, not a new system of citation.2 ALWD selected Darby Dickerson, director of legal writing at Stetson University and a noted expert on legal citation, to draft the manual. She sought input from all the members of ALWD and produced a manual that came out in May 2000. There are now later printings with updates and corrections (visit www.alwd.org for details). General Overview of the ALWD Manual Consistent with the goals of ALWD, the ALWD Manual did not revolutionize the form of citations. For the most part, citations look the same under the ALWD Manual and The Bluebook. But there are some changes that practitioners should know about:
Fast Formats — The ALWD Manual provides several sample citations for each type of authority in sections called “Fast Formats.” Before each chapter of the manual that covers a type of authority (cases, constitutions, statutory codes, local ordinances, etc.), there is a Fast Formats section. In the Fast Formats section you can find several examples of how to cite that particular authority. The examples are much more exhaustive than the examples in The Bluebook, and the ALWD Manual does not need two sets of examples because citation styles and typefaces are exactly the same for law review footnotes and for court documents and legal memoranda. Sidebars — This useful feature provides a simple, readable explanation of a point of legal citation. Often the sidebars clarify common errors or offer writing, formatting, or researching tips. The ALWD Manual has dozens of these helpful sidebars on a broad range of research and writing topics, like:
The citation rules have not changed dramatically. To see this, review the comparisons below, which show how five typical authorities would be cited under both the ALWD Manual and the 17th edition of The Bluebook. (These are the answers to the questions from the beginning of the seminar.) Cases ALWD Manual U.S. v. Natl. Bank, 349 F.2d 294, 297-298 (5th Cir. 1977). Bluebook United States v. Nat’l Bank, 349 F.2d 294, 297-98 (5th Cir. 1977). Comments:
ALWD Manual 15 U.S.C. § 145 (1995). Bluebook 15 U.S.C. § 145 (1995). Comments:
ALWD Manual Rudolf Dadjou, How to Write Farsi 24 (Harper & Row 1979). Bluebook Practitioner form: Rudolf Dadjou, How to Write Farsi 24 (1979). Law review form: RUDOLF DADJOU, HOW TO WRITE FARSIT24 (1979). Comments:
(scholarly publications) ALWD Manual Henry Wurtz, Derivatives Behind the Market, 55 Duke L.J. 300 (1987). Bluebook Practitioner form: Henry Wurtz, Derivatives Behind the Market, 55 Duke L.J. 300 (1987). Law review form: Henry Wurtz, Derivatives Behind the Market, 55 Duke L.J. 300 (1987). Comments:
ALWD Manual Kimberli Jensen, Financial Planning, 135 Newsweek 28 (Oct. 24, 1999). Bluebook Practitioner form: Kimberli Jensen, Financial Planning, Newsweek, Oct. 24, 1999, at 28. Law review form: Kimberli Jensen, Financial Planning, Newsweek, Oct. 24, 1999, at 28. Comments:
All the reviews of the ALWD Manual that I have read are favorable, though nearly none of them are disinterested. In other words, most of the reviews are written by members of ALWD, or by legal-writing instructors who are supporters of ALWD. Nonetheless, the early reports are that it is an excellent book and a very useful tool for teaching and learning citation. The ALWD Manual is already gaining acceptance at law schools across the country. The number of legal-research-and-writing programs that have adopted the ALWD Manual is quite large. This is understandable because those who make decisions about how citation is taught are often members of ALWD or its sister organization, the Legal Writing Institute. As of August 2001, more than 80 law schools had adopted ALWD for their legal-writing programs.10 Consequences of Adopting the ALWD Manual What about students who learn the ALWD Manual in school but need to use The Bluebook in law practice after school? There are two answers. First, students who used the ALWD Manual should be able to adapt easily to The Bluebook. Most of the citation forms are the same, and the rest are close, so it won’t be like an English speaker learning Japanese; it will be more like an easterner learning a Texas dialect. Students may be even better at citation because they learned from the ALWD Manual — its format and clarity means student will have a better basic understanding on which to build their knowledge, even if they switch to The Bluebook. Second, the variations in citation form are few and small. Only the most careful scrutiny of citations will reveal a difference. Generally, most practitioners and judges will not be able to tell whether a document as a whole, much less a particular citation, was done under The Bluebook or the ALWD Manual. In short, students will be learning not the ALWD Manual form, but will be learning standard citation form — from the ALWD Manual. The Future. Many believe that the ALWD Manual will not be able to displace The Bluebook because The Bluebook has been so strong for so long. The Maroon Book, published by the University of Chicago Law Review in 1989, was never able to catch on. But it attempted only to simplify citation forms. The ALWD Manual has a better chance because it tries to improve the way citation is taught and learned. That will make a big difference. Further, the ALWD Manual has a built in constituency — legal writing directors and teachers — who are adopting it, using it, and pushing it. ALWD itself has outreach committees to send the ALWD Manual to judges and to ask them to consider it. If judges started requiring it in court documents, that would add tremendous weight to the ALWD Manual movement. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||