Concurring Opinions penned a long post that is critical of the Bluebook rules for pin cites. Daniel Solove argues:
I believe pin cites are important for direct quotations or for difficult-to-find facts in sources. But they are often unnecessary for many facts or for holdings of cases. What annoys authors is that instead of working on improving the substantive arguments and writing of an article, a ton of time is wasted hunting for pin cites that few readers will care about.
Pretty uncontroversial issue, right? Think again! The post drew the attention (and ire) of some current and former law review editors, and they quickly weighed in with their own opinions about the citation abilities (or lack thereof) of legal scholars and law professors. One former law review editor unleashed this opinion:
My disagreement with you lies in the willingness to give the authors' statements presumptive validity. Having personally seen many respected authors attempt to blow a fast one past the editors (and, consequently, the readers), I'm defending the requirement for more precision. And I am doing so not as an editor who wanted to Bluebook the article to perfection. I didn't. I'm defending the precision (namely, the use of pin cites) for the readers' sake.
Many readers are fooled by the authors into thinking that their articles are novel and insightful. The authors do so by making statements of the following form: "Many scholars in the field argue X. Shockingly, no one has paid sufficient attention to Y. I am going to argue Y and show how brilliant I am." Often, the authors want to omit a citation for the first proposition--that many scholars argue X. Their reasoning mirrors that in your response to my previous post, that the statement should be obvious to anyone well-versed in the field. Well, not necessarily.
And there's more! All in all, the post generated 33 lengthy comments from law professors and current and former editors, all fiercely defending or condemning the pin cite requirement. If you're cite-checking and need to take a break, this post and its comments should provide welcome comic relief from the tedium of cite-checking.
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