What’s in a Name? Abbreviating Case Names
My first-year law students are beginning to learn about legal citation. Today we discussed a question that sometimes causes confusion: whether to abbreviate the first word of a case name. The answer requires a student to synthesize a few rules from the Bluebook.
Bluebook Rule 10.2.2 states that all words listed in Table 6 (the table of abbreviations) must be abbreviated, even the first word in a party name. Table 6 notes that a word of eight letters (or more) may be abbreviated at the author’s discretion if substantial space is saved. Abbreviated words are punctuated by a period, unless the abbreviation is formed with an apostrophe (Corp., but Ass’n).