7.10 The Main Part: About References

Module 7

Page 10 of 13

Four Good Reasons for Good References

The purpose of references is fourfold:

First...

Your references show that you are aware of and have evaluated the prior art and all important prior arguments. Therefore, you need to reference all important sources upon which your understanding of the subject and ultimately your paper is based. With your references you are disclosing how thorough your research has been. If important sources are missing, for example the seminal paper of a leading expert in the field, the reader will conclude that you have not done a very good job and may not be the expert you claim to be, respectively that your paper is not worth reading and certainly not worth citing.

Second...

Your references not only accumulate the prior art but also show how your paper is positioned in relation to this prior art. You do that by discussing the prior art and agreeing with some and disagreeing with other writers and sources, and providing persuasive reasons for your agreement or disagreement. Thus, good academic writing is not about accumulating a large number of footnotes to impress the reader and claim – truthfully or not – that you have read all those materials. Good academic writing is about an actual engagement with those sources in the form of a reasoned discussion. To this end, don't miss the Four Levels of Analysis and the Construction and Deconstruction of Arguments.

Third...

Your references are about acknowledgment that you are not the first human to consider a wheel but that you are standing on the shoulders of many teachers and authors who have come before you and have laid the groundwork for the incremental addition to the collective knowledge of humankind you are offering today. Thus, your references are about giving credit to whom credit is due for any data points, ideas, arguments, and even expressions that are not of your own invention or creation. To this end, read on about Plagiarism and How To Avoid It.

Fourth and final...

Your references are about technical know-how, about being part of a particular scientific community. By correct and complete references, you demonstrate that you are a member of that community. By incomplete, incorrect, or technically unusual references you demonstrate that you are either a slob who cannot be trusted or that you don’t really know what you are doing (or both).

Besides having references to all important sources and to all sources you are drawing on, you therefore need to pursue the following goals:

  1. Your references have to be done in the style and format required by the academic community you belong to or want to belong to; for most academic writing in law in the United States, this would require citations pursuant to “the Bluebook”, i.e. the Uniform System of Citation published by the Harvard Law Review Association (although I personally prefer the ALWD Citation Manual);
  2. Your references have to be precise and correct; the test has to be whether any reader, including a non-specialized reader, could find the actual passage or data point you are referring to and check whether your reference is indeed correct, and to do so with a reasonable investment of time and effort. This test is particularly important for foreign or uncommon materials. The common needs to be cited in the correct and common format. The uncommon needs to be findable. In this regard, citations sometimes found in social science papers such as “Huber, 2012” are unacceptable because the book or paper by Huber published in 2012 surely contains many arguments on many pages and it cannot possibly be dumped on the reader to find out by themselves which one you are referring to, if they want to verify your reference.
  3. Your references should always be to the best available sources, not to the most easily available sources. In particular, you cannot refer to websites instead of academic books and/or academic articles. In a recent paper submitted for review, the student had relied heavily on websites, including general knowledge sites such as Wikipedia, for certain foundations of a foreign legal system. While those sites may contain the same information as a number of well-known and generally accessible academic books (in the English language!), it is not the same to cite the websites instead of the books. Remember that you are writing an academic paper, not a newspaper. Reference to websites is permissible only if they are the best available source, for example for very recent news or events on which there are to date no higher quality publications.

Some Good and Some Bad Examples

As stated above, the format and content of your references or footnotes, in addition to their number and comprehensiveness, tell a lot about your research and whether or not your work is worth reading and to be taken seriously.

  1. If your text is largely descriptive and merely a re-telling of the story or stories already published by others, it may still have a significant number of references. However, these will look as if you are just adding them to common-sense statements or previously known facts or ideas to give credit and to look scientific. Please note, a large number of footnotes, even if containing a diversity of sources, does not establish academic credentials on its own. To be a genuine academic paper, you have to engage with the sources, not just hang them in there as decorations. Engagement means a discussion of the relative merit of an idea or argument or the lack thereof, with reasons given. Key words to be used are "because" and "therefore".

     Bad example:

    The EU is the largest economy in the world.1) The EU is also the world's largest trader of manufactured goods and services.2) With the openness of the trade regime, the EU is the biggest player in the global trading system and remains a good region to do business with.3) Today, the EU consists of 28 member countries4) and has a strong position by acting together with one voice on the global stage.5) The EU has 500 million consumers looking for quality goods and services.6) The EU is the world's largest single market with transparent rules and regulations.7) More importantly, the EU is the most open market to developing countries in the world.8)

    This example is only marginally adapted from an actual doctoral dissertation draft submitted in 2015; while the student has a large number of references, essentially one after each sentence, most of them are likely to be "Ibid". More importantly, these are all just factual statements without any discussion of the relative strengths or weaknesses of ideas and arguments. For academic purposes they basically don't count. Descriptive parts are necessary in almost each academic paper but they only prepare the reader for the academic discussion of ideas and arguments that needs to follow and that needs to be the main part and the purpose of the paper!

     Better example:

    It has been argued ..... 1) This would be problematic, however, in the present context because ..... . Alternative suggestions include ..... 2) and ..... 3). The relative strengths of the first alternative suggestion are ..... . However, it has been criticized as .....4). Because of ..... and ..... the second alternative suggestion would seem to avoid these pitfalls and provide a better solution for the problem at hand. This is supported, at least in principle, by empirical data .....5). Therefore, ..... .

     

  2. Of course, the actual content of the footnotes also plays a major role. The key is to engage with many sources, representative of the entire prior art, at the same time and not in sequence. To understand this point, if necessary, please refer to Module 6.2 about trains and networks.

     Bad example:

    1) Watson, The Rule of Law, pp. 121-143.

    2) Ibid.

    3) Ibid.

    4) Ibid.

    5) Ibid.

    6) Miller, International Projects to Promote the Rule of Law in Developing Countries, pp. 157-193, at p. 161 et seq.

    7) Ibid.

    8) Ibid.

    9) Ibid.

    10) Ibid.

    This kind of a sequencing of references usually shows that the author is merely paraphrasing one source after another, the first on one point and the next source on the next point, without an actual discussion of a variety of arguments on one and the same point.

     Better example:

    1) This definition of the rule of law by Watson could be called a narrow definition, see Watson ..... By contrast, Miller uses a broader definition which also includes ..... and ..... See Miller, ..... For the present purposes, a middle-of-the road approach along the lines of ..... would seem preferable because ..... Similar arguments have been made by Tyson, ..... and Hoffman, ..... relying on slightly different reasons, namely ..... This reinforces the present approach because ..... .

    As a rule of thumb, it is highly recommended never to have more than one (1!) "ibid." or "id." in a row!

  3. Finally, many papers are annoying to read because of the cross-references in the footnotes, in particular via the incorrect usage of "supra" and "infra". Three mistakes should be avoided:

    1. Multiple full citations of a source in close proximity instead of the use of "supra":

       Bad example:

      1) Emmert, Market Economy, Democracy, or Rule of Law - What Would You Pick, if You Had to Choose?, in Epinay/Haag/Heinemann (eds.), Challenging Boundaries - Essays in Honor of Roland Bieber, Baden-Baden 2007, pp. 104-116.

      2) Emmert, Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe, Fordham International Law Journal 2009, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 551-586, at pp. 567-570.

      3) Emmert, Market Economy, Democracy, or Rule of Law - What Would You Pick, if You Had to Choose?, in Epinay/Haag/Heinemann (eds.), Challenging Boundaries - Essays in Honor of Roland Bieber, Baden-Baden 2007, pp. 104-116.

      If the author repeats the full citation of a source without need, in particular because it has just been included almost immediately before - and does so on a regular basis - she will give the impression of merely trying to inflate the number of pages.

       Better example:

      1) Emmert, Rule of Law in Central and Eastern Europe, Fordham International Law Journal 2009, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 551-586, at pp. 567-570.

      2) Emmert, Market Economy, Democracy, or Rule of Law - What Would You Pick, if You Had to Choose?, in Epinay/Haag/Heinemann (eds.), Challenging Boundaries - Essays in Honor of Roland Bieber, Baden-Baden 2007, pp. 104-116.

      3) Emmert, supra note 1.

      This is even true for different page references, for example

      4) Emmert, supra, note 1, at pp. 575-576.

    2. On the other hand, "supra" citations should not be to far-away references that will not easily be found by the reader who wants to quickly verify a source:

       Bad example:

      298) See above, note 67.

      In this regard it is recommended that "supra" should be used only if the same source has already been cited on the same page or at least not more than one or two pages before. If the source was cited longer ago, another full entry is justified.

    3. Finally, false cross-references should be avoided at all costs! These usually creep in when earlier chapters or pages are still being edited and some notes are deleted or added without careful adaptation of the numbers in all subsequent "supra" references. This problem can be minimized by following the suggestion under b) AND by making a search for all "supra" entries with verification whether they still refer to the correct note before a first or final draft is turned in.

      In this regard, students are also discouraged from using "infra" cross-references. Whenever a source is cited for the first time, a full entry is required.

      "Infra" should be limited to discussions in the main body of the work, for example "..... for further discussion, see infra, Part 5."