bluebook-law-review.csl errors (with fixes available)

fruitbat · 2024-12-19T02:01:29+00:00

For a Case (legal_case):
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7656420/r6wmh96zpcd92tqlpy8x.png

Or for a Statute (legislation):
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7656420/x4lepf2lui24nrxf6yw0.png

The current bluebook-law-review.csl produces incorrect output, for both first cite and subsequent cites (ibid and ibid-with-locator are fine):

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7656420/4jo9ko5ddrwp3d8y5l27.png

Errors with the Case (Bluebook Rule 10):
1. Supra is never used with cases - Rule 4.2
2. subsequent cite should be Short Title, not Author
3. Short Title should be italic (not shown, since Author is produced)
4. URL is most often not appropriate, Case already cites to its source reporter

Errors with the Statute (Bluebook Rule 12):
1. Supra is never used with statutes - Bluebook Rule 4.2
2. The 15 (pincite) in the first cite to Statute, is the locator, but should be the section number "924"
3. The (1984) issuance should be appended to the Statute name "of 1984" using the Date Enacted
4. Public law is entirely omitted.
5. Author is never appropriate for a statute
6. URL is not appropriate. While annotated statutes may refer to the annotator, it generally wouldn't use the URL to do it. There are cases where state statutes may be cited directly to a URL, there isn't likely a way to make those decisions in CSL without conditionals or something. I couldn't find a way.
7. The italics are all wrong.

This is what should produced:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/zotero.org/images/forums/u7656420/378qopk1w8siwb3jrvwx.png

I've made the fixes in bluebook-law-review.csl and would like to know, procedurally, how to get it merged back in.

I've cloned the styles from GitHub, but I'm unclear on how to proceed from there. Fork, submit Pull Request? Etc.

Thanks in advance....

adamsmith · 2024-12-19T03:12:36+00:00

I think these are all fine, yes, though I'm less concerned about rendering authors for cases and statutes: these generally shouldn't be in the metadata, and where they are, the user might have a different purpose by using them.

Fixes as PRs please, yes, and we're a bit underresourced there at the moment, so please be patient.

fruitbat · 2024-12-19T04:56:14+00:00

Thank you @adamsmith!

I noticed the Author issue when I got author metadata from CourtListener.com, and that metadata is correct and valuable.

Each court Case typically has at least one opinion, but cases often have more than one opinion: the majority opinion, a dissenting opinion, concurring opinions, an so on. Ideally, Zotero could use locator information to determine which opinion is being referenced, and then include the appropriate author and opinion type (e.g. a majority opinion never cites the author, but a dissent would cite the author as dissenting "(Jackson, J., dissenting)"). This would require changes to the Case (legal_case) structure to add multiple opinions to the Case (author, first page of the opinion, type of opinion (e.g. dissenting, concurring, ...). I know, I know... this is "Pie in the Sky" thinking. Just throwing it out there for the future.

PR #7364 Submitted....