Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2026
Abstract
This essay offers a comprehensive account of the past forty years of scholarship on footnotes within law. Not just any old footnotes, but footnotes that are discursive in form, that is, those with an expressive rather than bibliographic function. After contrasting the function of discursive footnotes in judicial opinions with those in academic legal literature, this essay identifies and decodes a comparatively hidden avant garde footnotes literature. Borrowing from techniques of literary criticism, that literature, properly understood, provides a foundation for our making more subtle judgments about both the relation of primary to secondary texts and the allocation of responsibilities between readers and writers.
Recommended Citation
Daniel Yeager,
Discursive Footnotes,
64
Duq. L. Rev.
681
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/fs/536