A new edition of everyone’s favorite legal grimoire has dropped, and John Wrench convenes Sam Gedge and Diana Simpson to ask the hard questions: Is the Bluebook a sacred scroll, or an eldritch horror that feeds on the souls of each new generation of lawyers? The party ponders the secrets revealed by a Bluebook insider, including the mysterious process behind some controversial changes in the newest edition. See, e.g., Bluebook at Rule B5.3 (discussing new “citation modified” parenthetical) (cleaned up). From there, they turn from one arcane text to another: Dictionaries are often treated as skeleton keys for unlocking original meaning, but it turns out they require careful handling lest they be misread or misused. The journey wraps with reflections on how—with the recent Skrmetti decision as a case study—public interest litigation often demands hard judgment calls about whether to press forward or hold back, how to weigh principle against timing, and what “victory” looks like.

Jack Metzler, Cleaning up Quotations

M. Burke Craighead, The Bluebook: An Insider’s Perspective

Scalia & Garner, A Note on the Use of Dictionaries

New York times piece on Skrmetti

Jennifer Mascott, The Dictionary as a Specialized Corpus