Law Schools

Controversy At Harvard Law Over The Bluebook?

Discontent on the Harvard Law campus.

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Bluebook Legal BluebookWe’ve extensively covered the burgeoning support for Baby Blue, the free, online, open-source rival of ultimate legal citation guide, The Bluebook. Though students at top law schools, Yale and NYU, have openly supported Baby Blue, the future isn’t all sunshine and roses for the online guide.

It seems Santa brought the creators of Baby Blue, Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org and NYU Professor Christopher Sprigman, a little bit of coal in their stocking. On Christmas Eve, they received a letter from Ropes & Gray representing Harvard Law Review Association (holders of The Bluebook copyright) informing them of a potential trademark violation over the name Baby Blue to go along with their copyright claims. While this legal showdown delayed the publication of Baby Blue, it didn’t stop it. But the specter of litigation has continued to hang over the project.

Law students from Yale and NYU have signed petitions supporting the Baby Blue future of legal citations, and now Harvard Law Students have joined the party. The language of the petition takes a lot of inspiration from those already in circulation, but it goes out of its way to recognize the unique power of voices from Harvard:

At Harvard Law, one of the schools affiliated with a publication claiming a copyright interest in the Bluebook, we have a special obligation to make this system accessible. When Baby Blue enters a period of public review, we look forward to offering our help and feedback. We encourage law students across the country to join us.

That’s not the only voice of discontent. The Harvard Law Record also recently published an op-ed critical of the legal strategy employed by Harvard Law Review Association:

[T]he tactics employed by the HLR Association’s counsel in dealing with Mr. Malamud and Prof. Sprigman are deplorable. The Harvard Law Review claims to be an organization that promotes knowledge and access to legal scholarship. It is a venerated part of the traditions of Harvard Law School. But these actions by the Harvard Law Review speak of competition and not of justice.

What’s worse is that BabyBlue is no threat to the funding of the Harvard Law Review. Even a brief glance at the history of the Internet suggests that in a world where prestige matters, where students and practitioners alike begun their practice with the Bluebook, it is certainly possible to compete with free. However, any legal action against BabyBlue for copyright or trademark infringement will retrench the narrative that the Harvard Law Review Association is more interested in its own profits than in access to legal citation. And given a choice between an implementation of a system that is open and freely available, like BabyBlue, and one that has pursued legal action to silence competing implementations, many users may choose to move away from the Bluebook.

It seems like Harvard Law Review Association, and The Bluebook, are out of step with students and the future.

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Read the full petition on the next page.

Harvard Law Review Should Welcome Free Citation Manual, Not Threaten Lawsuits [Harvard Law Record]

Earlier: Law Student Support For Open-Source Citation System Grows
Is The Bluebook About To Be Killed Off?
Yale Law Students Support The End Of The Bluebook

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