Confounding Bluebook Addition: The New “Contrast With” Signal

One of the most confounding changes to the new Bluebook edition is the new “Contrast with” signal. Its purpose is unclear; the long-established “Compare with” signal already includes elements of both comparing and contrasting. The structure of the “Compare with” signal is straightforward:

Compare [case A], and [case B], with [case C], and [case D].

One category of cases appears before the “with.” Another category appears after the “with.” The “with” itself facilitates a contrast between the two categories.

So how is the “Contrast with” signal different? Other than swapping out the word “compare” for “contrast,” The Bluebook does not say. This new signal will likely introduce even more confusion for legal writers who were already wary of using the “Compare with” signal.

Consider this example of the “Compare with” signal from my upcoming publication, The Pedagogy of Legal Synthesis:

The longer or more repetitive a person’s offensive conduct is, the more likely it is outrageous. Compare Craft, 671 S.W.2d. at 248, 251 (holding reasonable jury could find police officer’s conduct was outrageous when he harassed plaintiffs for nearly three months by keeping them under surveillance and disparaging them over CB radio), and Brewer, 15 S.W.3d at 4-6 (concluding sufficient evidence showed that supervisor’s conduct was outrageous when he sexually harassed an employee for seven months), with Humana, 796 S.W.2d at 2-4 (determining nurses did not act outrageously when they told a patient delivering a stillborn baby to “shut up”—and then took the baby’s body from the patient and said they would “dispose of” it—but did not continue any offensive conduct afterward).

The signal is being used to juxtapose two categories of cases—one category where the plaintiff won, one category where the plaintiff lost. The law is the same across both categories of cases; the facts are what differentiate their outcomes.

Before The Bluebook’s 22nd edition released, this example’s citation structure unquestionably fell within the gambit of the “Compare with” signal. Now, the legal writer must stop and wonder: is this actually the best place to use a “Compare with”? Or should I use “Contrast with” instead? What’s the difference? The Bluebook provides no instruction.

Absent additional guidance, I plan to tell my students that these two signals are functionally equivalent and that they should usually stick with the traditional “Compare with” signal.