Who Really Created The Bluebook?

Last month Adam Liptak had an interesting article on a forthcoming article questioning the established wisdom that the Harvard Law Review created The Bluebook.  According to Liptak, the conventional account of The Bluebook's origins comes from a speech by former Harvard Law Review President (and former Solicitor General and HLS Dean) Erwin N. Griswold.  However, research by librarians Fred R. Shapiro and Julie Graves Krishnaswami shows otherwise.  According to the Yale Law School librarians, the true origins of The Bluebook can be found in "an eight-page booklet prepared in 1920 by Karl N. Llewellyn, who was editor in chief of The Yale Law Journal."

Shapiro and Krishnaswami's research will be published in the Minnesota Law Review.  It is currently available on SSRN.