I Desecrated a Bluebook, in Public

So when the end of the year rolled around we put together our “Law Revue.” A few of us did a take on Les Miserables designed to poke fun at what I will call the culture of Bluebook idolatry. You can imagine how it went: Valjean is in prison for improperly italicizing an ellipse; Javert is the nazi editor who relentlessly hounds Valjean for his sloppy bluebooking; to escape Javert’s tyranny, Valjean disavows the U.S. legal academy, moves to Canada, and becomes an interdisciplinary legal studies professor. At this point in the play, just as Hugo’s Valjean tears up his yellow parole ticket, our farcical Valjean tears up a Bluebook.

We had about ten students in the play, and when I suggested at our first (and only) rehearsal that Valjean would destroy a Bluebook, you should have seen their faces. I honestly do not think that proposing to destroy a bona fide religious text would have elicited a stronger reaction. They were aghast; dumbfounded; in terror, awe, and shock. Tear up a Bluebook? HOW COULD YOU?

The ultimate performance went well. We had some terrific singers and what I thought were some decent lines (Fantine, lamenting how her RA had promised to Bluebook all her footnotes but abandoned her on the eve of submission, sings “I dreamed a dream in time gone by / when hope was high and ideas worth writing / I dreamed my piece would place so high / I dreamed my offers would be exciting”). Alas, the audience did not laugh quite like I expected. But when Valjean tears up the Bluebook? Riotous applause. To the students in the audience, it was the skit’s psychological climax.

What is it about this book? Silly me, I thought it was nothing more than an editing guide. But in the contemporary academy it somehow morphs into a powerful and multi-faceted symbol: of success, or oppression, or ennui. We suggest to our students that law review is the pinnacle of law school prestige, and then they find it to be largely administrative work. Is it me, or are edits at even the top law reviews growing increasingly tedious, unreasonable, and utterly detached from the article’s real substance and importance?  I am reminded of Thomas Merton’s account of the ladder we spend our lives climbing, but upon reaching the top realize that we’ve leaned it against the wrong wall. Seems to me that we, as legal educators, should help our students pitch their ladders more meaningfully.

And how did our skit end? Valjean adopts Fantine’s orphaned manuscript, finishes the footnotes and, having come to terms with the legal academy (singing "Who Am I?"), places it in the top 25.