The topic again is FOOTNOTES, one of the best means of protecting against false information and fabricated history.
Today and tomorrow I wish to compare and contrast HISTORY-BOOK FOOTNOTES and LAW REVIEW FOOTNOTES.
Starting with the latter brings us immediately to the BLUE BOOK which is the form book for legal-journal citations of authorities. It is available in print or online (which I prefer), and its 22d edition is now out.
The Blue Book's goal is to create a lingua franca for legal scholars and authors. But the Blue Book provides a far more complicated regimen for legal citations than historians' style of footnoting (tomorrow's topic).
The law-student editors of the law reviews know and wield these complex rules ruthlessly when working over article drafts accepted from legal authors.
And one thing I have experienced with publishing in law journals and continue to challenge is OVER-FOOTNOTING. The student editors will say that their charge is: "EVERY FACT AND EVERY LEGAL ASSERTION MUST BE FOOTNOTED." I disagree. For instance, there are matters of general, undisputed knowledge that need no footnote, such as "The sun always rises in the east" and "The Supreme Court comprises nine justices."
And then there is the problem of whether specific clauses or phrases within a sentence need to be footnoted in law articles. Traditionally there was a preference for all footnotes at the ends of sentences, but a casual review of recently published articles in major-league law journals shows mid-sentence footnotes.
