ALWD Citation Manual
From LawGuru Wiki
The ALWD Citation Manual is a book and a widely used legal citation system for the United States compiled by the Association of Legal Writing Directors. Its 1st edition was published in 2000. Currently, it is in its 2nd edition (2002).
It primarily competes with the Bluebook, a system developed by law reviews at several elite law schools, led by Harvard. Citations in the two formats are roughly similar. However, ALWD differs from The Bluebook in one key respect.
Under the Bluebook system, the type styles used in citations found in academic legal articles (always footnoted) are very different from those used in citations within court documents (always cited inline). While the ALWD system follows the standard convention of footnotes within academic articles and inline citations in court documents, it rejects The Bluebook's insistence on using different type styles in the two classes of documents. The ALWD type style is identical to that used in the Bluebook system for citations within court documents.
Adoptions
Although apparently wide spread in law schools, ALWD has yet to make definitive impact in the Courts. One possible reason is that the U.S. Supreme Court mandates the Bluebook in briefs submitted to the Court. Only four U.S. jurisdictions have adopted ALWD:
- United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
- United States Bankruptcy Court, Montana
- United States District Court for the District of Montana
- Command Judge Advocate Office on the Kwajalein Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands.
