Just last week, I wrote about a valuable resource for legal writers, available at no cost from the Social Science Research Network. While SSRN concentrates primarily on serious scholarly works, every once in a while it also publishes a humorous piece of legal writing.

Rhapsody in Blue: An Ode to The Bluebook was first published in The Green Bag, the only law journal that produces its own set of Supreme Court Bobbleheads. Its author is Michael Coenen, a 2009 Yale Law School grad.

Coenen devotes a stanza to each of The Bluebook’s 21 rules, a couplet to each of its 16 tables. Even the introductory Bluepages and the terminal index get their due.

As a former editor of the Yale Journal of Law and Technology and author of a Yale Law Journal comment entitled Original Jurisdiction Deadlocks, Coenen surely had enough exposure to The Bluebook to prompt in him a strong reaction to the tome. While it has many detractors (including all 125 members of a Facebok group called The Bluebook is Evil), The Bluebook rarely inspires the kind of affection—nay, devotion—expressed in Coenen’s poem.

What do you think? Do you adore The Bluebook or despise it? And how about the poem: great literature or groaner?