Upgrade StorageBluebook law-review
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P.S. Is bluebook 19 back up?
Here's a long answer to your short question, with some background information that might be of interest to others using the legal styles ...
Problems over the Bluebook (19th ed) style that I had written originally arose in connection with a book I am writing about (multilingual and) legal styles in Zotero. As a first step toward more serious work on the style, I sent the Bluebook editors a query, in which I suggested that accessing their site, in connection with the book project, might be permissible under their (very narrow) Terms of Use. They responded as follows:This came as a bit of a shock, and I followed up through multiple channels to confirm that they were indeed serious. It has been confirmed to me (repeatedly) that they are. I'm banned from the service. In subsequent correspondence, the editors refused to take a position on whether the copious abbreviation lists contained in their handbook are covered by copyright [See, e.g. Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)]. They also intimated that a robust implementation of their style might breach (unspecified) rights that they hold.
"The Bluebook" is not unique; the rules specified in the ALWD Manual are nearly identical, with trivial changes to typeface conventions and a few other small details. When I wrote to the ALWD editors, explaining the situation and inviting them to take a more cooperative stance toward implementation of the style rules, they responded as follows:I followed up with further information, but received no response.
Following this unfortunate series of events, I posted a screencast demonstrating the operation of a US and a UK legal style with abbreviation list support, and copied the link to the editors of The Bluebook and the ALWD Manual. After abbreviation lists commonly used in US court filings appeared online, I wrote to the editors of The Bluebook stating my intention to go forward with bundling the lists into the software demonstrated in the screencast, with a view to distribution. This was back in November of last year.
Meanwhile, a publisher that had expressed serious interest in my own book withdrew their offer in light of the initial objections (a fact I noted to the editors of the ALWD). Whether for that reason or for some other, neither the editors of The Bluebook nor the editors of the ALWD Manual have taken the trouble to respond further.
As reported back in November, I have decided to go forward with the book anyway, through Lulu, with August of this year as the target for release. The volume will document the use of several legal styles, some developed by me, some by other authors. The US style in the suite is named the Wisconsin Court Style (WCS). It implements rules that can be found in The Bluebook and the ALWD Manual.
The response to the prospect of robust Zotero support for law in other jurisdictions has been quite positive. In Canada, the editors of the McGill Guide have assured me that they do not have a problem with implementation of their style rules. The lead editor of the UK OSCOLA style (distributed under a CC license) has been very supportive. Development of the New Zealand Law style (by Julia Caldwell) enjoys the official blessing and support of the copyright holder of that style guide. Resistance to this channel of innovation seems to be a bug specific to the US environment. It must be something in the water.
During the past several months, I have been working to build out the OSCOLA and WCS styles, tuning the citation processor to handle the special requirements of legal referencing. To achieve satisfactory results -- the predictable and seamless experience users enjoy in other fields -- some adjustments to the input delivered to the processor are required, which are not (yet) possible in the official Zotero client. As a result, the new legal styles work only in the multilingual Zotero (MLZ) client hosted on the CitationStylist site that I maintain. This is an experimental branch of official Zotero. The core Zotero developers do not offer support for this version of the client, because they have other things on their plate; but it is intended for eventual merger back into the official client, not as a permanent fork.
I am determined to make strong legal style support available in Zotero, and to open a path for other projects using CSL to do the same. The plan (on my desk, at least) is to work up full support in the MLZ environment, and then jump it across to the official version in one go after the requirements have been clarified and it is known to be working well.
So ... I can look into the subsequent references issue in the existing Zotero "Bluebook" style, as a temporary patch for simple cases; but for future development of US legal support, I will be concentrating on the WCS style in MLZ.
Meanwhile, please understand that the awkwardness of the current situation is as frustrating to me as it is to other Zotero users with call for legal style support. We will dig our way out of the 20th century; it just take a little time and patience to get there.
Which of the Bluebook styles would you like to see fixed, and what is the exact issue?
Just had a break in other work, and took a look at the Bluebook styles in the Zotero repo. For cases, "Bluebook (2)" seems pretty broken, leaving out the date. "Bluebook" does the same, but backrefs with supra which is wrong for the Case type. "Bluebook 19th" seems to be available again in the repo (I had originally asked for it to be pulled as a precaution following the correspondence quoted above); and in light of the non-events described above, I'm happy for it to be up there. It seems to do more or less the right thing in back-references.