In his article, The Under-Theorized Asterisk Footnote, Sullivan notes, “The asterisk footnote, although universally deployed in legal scholarship, has been equally universally ignored by the academy as a focus of scholarly interest.” In its humble origins, the asterisk footnote merely identified an article’s author in terms of his or her academic credentials and institutional affiliation. Today, however, such footnotes serve a “more robust, and perhaps more pretentious, function,” says Sullivan. Now they typically consist of long passages of homage to an eye-straining list of co-authors, researchers, readers, editors, grantors, supporters, and even conference and workshop participants. As evidence of this growth, Sullivan points out that his research found an article in the Harvard Law Review that named 51 people, 23 conferences or workshops (in at least three counties) and 34 research assistants in its asterisk footnote. “Could it be that authors are using the asterisk to signal to law review editors that their pieces are really, really significant,” asks Sullivan.

Sullivan explains he decided to write on the asterisk footnote “for the same reason Hillary climbed Everest: it was there, and nobody else was tackling it.”

The Under-Theorized Asterisk Footnote originally was published by The Georgetown Law Journal (March 2005). As part of the Exemplary Legal Writing 2005 list, it now will be republished in The Green Bag Almanac and Reader 2006.

The Green Bag is a journal for legal scholars, practitioners, judges and other public servants, where contributors are encouraged to “toss out a creative thought or make an argument that merits more than a letter to the editor but with fewer than fifty footnotes.”

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