It is common in the author footnote of law review articles — you know, the footnote that follows the author’s name that tells you who the author is — to thank people who have read drafts of the articles and offered comments to help improve it. It is also common to follow that expression of gratitude with a remark that any errors in the article are responsibility of the author rather than the people who helped with it. Here are a few examples of the latter from recent articles, found by running a search for “thank! /p error! /s mine & da(2009)” in Westlaw’s popular journals and law reviews database:
All errors are mine and mine alone.
Any errors contained herein are mine.
All errors are mine.
All errors, of course, remain mine.
All errors contained herein are mine and mine alone.
All errors and conclusions are mine.
As always, any errors or oversights are mine alone.
Any errors that remain in the paper are mine.
The sentiment of the “all errors are mine” comment is supposed to be a generous one. You wouldn’t want anyone who just read the paper and offered some comments — or perhaps who helped do some research for it, such as a research assistant — to be blamed for errors in the paper.
At the same time, am I right that the “all errors are mine” comment is pretty useless? If a paper has an error in it, I put the responsibility for that on the author. If it’s a Bluebooking error, I might put the responsibility on the editors of the journal who were in charge of Bluebooking. But it would never occur to me to blame a person who read an article and offered comments for any errors found in the paper. Comments are just comments. They’re food for thought that the author can accept or reject, not a mandate to adopt the argument that the commenter suggests. The author is the person with her name on the front page: No one needs to be reminded that the author is ultimately responsible for the contents of what follows.
Assuming others see it the same way, can we all agree to retire the “all errors are my own” line? I realize that it isn’t the most pressing problem facing America right now. But it would be very easy to fix, and I don’t think anyone would miss it.
BABH says:
It’s a nice psychological move. After acknowledging that the ideas are not all the author’s own, the author re-establishes authority by declaring that he or she is, in fact, responsible for the paper.
It is more elegant to write “all errors are mine” than to write “all due thanks to Prof. Sunstein, but I’m no plagiarist.”
September 6, 2010, 10:23 pmOrin Kerr says:
BABH, do you interpret thanking a person for comments on an article as a statement that the ideas in the article are not the author’s own? I don’t. Do others?
September 6, 2010, 10:27 pmmoderate says:
I agree with this suggestion completely. The sentence is (at best) a waste of space.
In some fields, there is also now a pseudo-required paragraph at the end of the introduction. It goes something like “The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. Section 2 reviews the relevant literature. Section 3 provides the hypotheses. Section 4 provides the empirical analysis. Section 5 concludes.”
I also have no idea who would possibly find such a paragraph useful. Is it surprising that the empirical analysis is after the lit review? Is putting the conclusion at the end so shocking that it must be mentioned in the introduction? Kill this and save some space.
September 6, 2010, 10:36 pmOrin Kerr says:
Moderate, I tend disagree about the roadmap paragraph, at least in law reviews. First, it’s very helpful for the reader to know the order and structure of the article. And second, at least in law, it’s common to say more than just the label of the sections: The roadmap paragraph usually gives a one-or-two-sentence summary of the argument or conclusion of that part of the article.
September 6, 2010, 10:39 pmanomdebus says:
I see it as kind of the equivalent to being sworn in. It is a deliberate affirmative act meant to make it difficult for the person to disclaim later.
September 6, 2010, 10:50 pmAnother analogue could be the “I approve this message” campaign ad requirement.
Cornellian says:
Such sentiments are useless to the extent that you consider good manners to be useless.
September 6, 2010, 10:55 pmOrin Kerr says:
Cornellian says: Such sentiments are useless to the extent that you consider good manners to be useless.
What does it have to do with good manners?
September 6, 2010, 11:03 pmOrin Kerr says:
Can you give me some examples of authors who tried to blame people who read the article and offered comments for errors found in the article?
September 6, 2010, 11:04 pmEugene Kontorovich says:
Orin, you’ve really been on a roll lately. This is a classically dysfunctional social norm. I’ve always disliked the disclaimer, but wondered if it would be a faux pas to not include it. Thus I included it, further increasing pressure on the next author.
I read these disclaimers as saying “there are no errors in this paper, otherwise I would not so gladly except blame for them.”
Nor is the disclaimer accurate. If someone did data analysis for you and you did not check it, the errors are indeed theirs, but the responsibility yours. Different things.
September 6, 2010, 11:12 pmBABH says:
No of course not, at least on a rational level. But a good author employs ethos and pathos as well as logos. The “disclaimer” is a neat rhetorical device to shift the reader’s attention back onto the author.
Or at least it used to be. Nowadays it’s an empty cliche.
September 6, 2010, 11:16 pmOrin Kerr says:
BABH,
I don’t know what it used to be, but I agree it’s an empty cliche today.
September 6, 2010, 11:22 pmKazinski says:
I want to hear more about the Cass Sunstein theory before making up my mind.
September 6, 2010, 11:27 pmanomdebus says:
If you are asking for examples related to law articles, I cannot help you as this blog is the closest I get to legal scholarship.
I have heard in more general literature authors blaming others for why their work was faulty. I don’t feel compelled to try to dig up some examples since I don’t disagree with you. The examples I am likely to find won’t match what you are probably looking for.
Btw, I didn’t think my examples necessarily needed in its present form either. The only information in the campaign commercials just denotes that it is an official candidate commercial versus third party. And court oaths could just as easily be replaced by an affirmation of understanding the consequences of deliberate falsehoods.
September 6, 2010, 11:30 pmGuy says:
I always thought the real reason was to plant the idea in the readers’ heads that maybe they should share the blame, the idea that it would even be possible to blame someone other than the author would never even occur to me if not for the disclaimer. It’s sort of like “Don’t think of an elephant”.
September 6, 2010, 11:31 pmHyena says:
The phrase should be dropped and replaced with “All errors in this paper are the fault of Cass Sunstein.”
September 6, 2010, 11:35 pmJay says:
Yeah, I think there’s something to this. It sort of sounds like “it’s possible some errors were introduced by all these random people I just name-dropped, but I’m not going to point any fingers.” Whereas if no one said that and you came across an error while reading, you’d naturally assume it was the author’s.
September 6, 2010, 11:40 pmBlackX says:
I say ditch it. In 19 years of editing business papers, I saw it on occasion but not so commonly to think much further. Sounds like it is much more common in law papers. Do other disciplines use variations of the line much.
September 6, 2010, 11:43 pmGary Curtis says:
Years ago, I read a philosophy paper that had in its acknowledgments something along the lines of: “I won’t insult those who read and commented on this paper by absolving them of responsibility for any remaining errors. They should have caught them.” I loved it! Unfortunately, I can’t remember the author or title.
September 6, 2010, 11:59 pmOnHawaiianTime says:
In most cases, it’s about as useless as the rest the law review article.
September 7, 2010, 12:11 amOrin Kerr says:
Gary, yes, jokes about the “all errors are my own” line are not entirely uncommon. Which to me points to the silliness of the line.
September 7, 2010, 12:12 amGU says:
I always saw the “all errors are my own” line as a way to encourage people who disagree with you to review/contribute comments to your paper. It’s a reminder to the reader that all errors, including errors in logic and political philosophy, are the author’s. Given that disclaimer, others who disagree with you can feel more confident that they won’t be lumped with your beliefs just for reviewing your paper. Left-wing scholars can comment on a libertarian’s paper (and be name-dropped), but the “all errors are my own” shows the error of libertarian beliefs (from a non-libertarian perspecitve) was not committed/encouraged by the lefty, and vice versa.
One would think the scholarly process would be above such pageantry, but I’m not so confident.
September 7, 2010, 12:17 amJohnF says:
Another problem is that, if there are errors, the reader can’t possibly figure out whose fault they are other that the author’s. So if the reader can’t tell who is responsible for the errors anyway, what’s the point of shielding the helpers and readers with the disclaimer?
September 7, 2010, 12:21 amSyd Henderson says:
Possible substitutes
September 7, 2010, 12:22 am“All errors in this manuscript are the responsibility of my children and my mistress who distracted me during its composition.”
“All errors in this manuscript are the responsibility of my wife and her divorce lawyer.”
“All errors in this manuscript are due to Satan, the Father of Lies.”
“All errors in this manuscript are a clever device to identify plagiarists.”
Dan Simon says:
Orin, I’ve always understood such phrases as intended primarily to cover direct quotations, citations or interpretations of a commenter’s opinions–particularly those that the commenter might later prefer to disavow for some reason. In effect, it says, “the previous list of people generously shared their thoughts with me, and I am grateful for their assistance. Naturally, I would like to minimize the risk to them of their generosity. Therefore, if an opinion, idea or quotation that I have attributed to them gets them into some kind of trouble, I hereby declare them free to disclaim that opinion, idea or quotation, and I will happily accept blame for the ‘error’.”
September 7, 2010, 12:27 amSteve 2 says:
I have to agree with moderate and disagree with Orin about the usefulness of the road map grafs. Admittedly, I write and read articles all of which are shorter than the majority of law review articles (and our footnotes aren’t longer than the body of the text…). In my field that graf is completely worthless as I can simply look at the titles of the sections.
Even in the few law review articles I’ve read, I haven’t found the roadmap to be particularly helpful since what’s coming up has been discussed in the introduction. I don’t find I need to know exactly which section contains which argument or conclusion.
September 7, 2010, 12:33 amGU says:
@Dan Simon
Yes. This is something I was trying to explicate in my comment above.
September 7, 2010, 12:37 amCornellian says:
Cornellian says: Such sentiments are useless to the extent that you consider good manners to be useless.
What does it have to do with good manners?
It is good manners in the same way that blaming your secretary for a typo in your brief is bad manners.
September 7, 2010, 12:49 amSam Schulman says:
There was an EngLit scholarly book published in the early 80s by a then-swaggering sort of fellow – I will never remember his name – who thanked a group of peers who were clearly the hottest figures in his period – and then did a wittier version of the acknowledgment Gary Young cites, to the effect that “these are all serious and learned people, and they are fully responsible for any errors that remain.” The understanding was that he was making fun of those inferior to him in the hierarchy, and also that he was underlining how impressive a group his pals were. The point is that you have to take into account the academic/reputational rank of the acknowledger – if he or she is younger and unknown, or older and a mediocrity, of course some sort of expression of humility is to be expected. If I was unfortunate enough to have remained in academia, I would take care to avoid doing this lest I be (probably with justice) identified as a mediocrity. Mediocrities, take heed.
September 7, 2010, 12:53 amAlso, acknowledgers are no different from most Americans: they seem to enjoy being able to come up with a cliche – it gives us as much pleasure as other cultures find in finding a new way to express a thought.
Orin Kerr says:
Cornellian writes: It is good manners in the same way that blaming your secretary for a typo in your brief is bad manners.
You’re making comparisons, but you’re not explaining what you think is the commonality between the two things you are comparing. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it would be helpful — at least to me — if you would explain the comparison and say why you think it is helpful or relevant. Otherwise I’m not sure what you are arguing.
September 7, 2010, 12:54 amGary Curtis says:
To me, too. I take it that the author was mocking the cliche. I’ve commented on other people’s papers, and I don’t feel the need that they absolve me of responsibility for remaining errors. If I missed a mistake, then I blew it. Also, I don’t think that I’ve ever used the cliche myself, though I was never went so far as to make fun of it. I suspect that people continue to use it just because they see it in every paper they read, and don’t realize that they don’t have to include it to avoid being sued.
September 7, 2010, 1:13 amasg says:
In one article I wrote, one of my commenters asked that if I chose to acknowledge him in my * footnote, I make it clear that he disagreed with my thesis entirely. I didn’t use the “all errors are mine” language, but instead used something more direct. Still, I can understand why some authors are generally inclined to do something to indicate that the persons who commented on the paper do not necessarily adopt the arguments of that paper.
Is this practice silly? Yes, I think so. The Green Bag probably does it the right way — if you really need to acknowledge someone, they should be a co-author, and the publication won’t otherwise acknowledge commenters (or at least they say they don’t).
As a lowly VAP, though, I’m not exactly in a position to depart from the general convention.
-Andy
September 7, 2010, 5:11 amCam says:
Not until lawyers stop saying that they will “vigorously defend.”
September 7, 2010, 5:12 amCam says:
Just about everytime a plagiarism scandal pops up.
September 7, 2010, 5:14 amrequired says:
I think the line originated with consulting with experts outside the author’s field (economist, doctor &c). It carried the sense that if the author botched something outside their field it shouldn’t be blamed on the expert’s lack of knowledge of the expert’s own field but on the author’s inability to understand the expert’s explanation. Personally my experience with news reporters leads me to believe that news articles should have that disclaimer, not that they always get stuff wrong just often enough that the disclaimer should be there. It seems to have carried over to reviewers for some reason, but it seems a reasonable disclaimer to include when consulting with an expert in an outside field – although it could be that a doctor confused an artery and a vein it is more likely that the author who consulted the doctor screwed it up.
September 7, 2010, 5:19 amJoe says:
This is not specific to legal papers — it is a usual technique in nonfiction books as well. I find it a bit dubious myself. You have various people who are so important to the work in question being thanked. Sometimes it is laid on thick — I couldn’t do it without these people. But, suddenly all errors is just the fault of the author. I guess “legally” — the buck stops there. But, realistically, if lots of people helped, some of them are partially to blame for at least certain errors.
It might be polite to not call attention to this fact — it’s your work, not theirs, you are the one who decided to write it, so in a way you are ultimately to blame, not they. And, I find it bit silly to be too worked up about the fact either. But, I don’t take such things totally seriously on a factual level all the same.
September 7, 2010, 8:49 amDuffy Pratt says:
If the author knew about an error, and kept it in, then it’s no longer an error, but something that the author intended to include.
So, the errors must be ones that the author doesn’t know appear in the article. Since he doesn’t know what the errors are, how can he know who is to blame? Not only is the statement useless, it is also false, at least in the sense that the author can’t know that its true. And that means that the footnote itself might be an error.
September 7, 2010, 9:15 amBB says:
Not to quibble with your capitalization, but shouldn’t that be “Bluebook (r) brand cite checking” and not “Bluebooking”?
September 7, 2010, 9:19 amMax Hailperin says:
An alternative that I used after listing people who commented was as follows: “Although I did not adopt all their suggestions, I did not ignore any of them, and I appreciate them all.” That was in a textbook, not a law-review article, but it seems like the issues are similar.
September 7, 2010, 10:16 amJust Dropping By says:
In serving on the boards of two different law journals, I only saw a handful of articles submitted with this line, so I never thought too much about it. I agree that it is useless and should be omitted.
September 7, 2010, 10:39 amShon Hopwood says:
I plan to write on my law review that: “All errors are undoubtedly the result of the editors”!!!!!
September 7, 2010, 10:50 amNoah says:
My experience in math is that this phrase is not commonly used in paper acknowledgements, but instead typically used in a expository setting where you’re saying something like “The following ideas were patiently explained to me by X, so any insight should be attributed to X while the mistakes should be attributed to me.” In that specific context it makes a lot more sense to me than in a generic thanks at the beginning of a paper. However, it may be the case that the caveat started in a more particular context and spread, or it may be the case that since law is likely to involve more summarizing of other people’s ideas than math is that such caveats make more sense in the context of a law article.
September 7, 2010, 11:24 amASlyJD says:
BB,
September 7, 2010, 11:38 amNo — we want to genericide Bluebooking as the only punishment on those bastards we can inflict.
frankcross says:
I think the blame Sunstein approach could take off, given an appropriate nudge.
September 7, 2010, 12:01 pmUrso says:
I agree with this. Generally the comments footnote amounts to nothing more than name dropping or, in the case of student notes, a cutesy thank you to the spouse/fiancee without whom none of this would’ve been possible!
Still, I suppose it’s better than the general academic tendency to grant co-author credit to anyone who so much as read through the manuscript prior to publication. My wife tells me that a good rule of thumb is to ignore anyone who isn’t listed as one of the top two authors.
September 7, 2010, 12:02 pmQuestioner says:
But isn’t it true that sometimes law reviews make changes after the author’s final review? In that case, there might be errors that were not the author’s, and even that the author does not know about. See here: http://www.ernietheattorney.net/2009/12/the-value-of-being-a-law-review-editor-oh-the-irony.html.
I, in fact, wrote a piece that was published by a law review. I never saw the final proof that was sent to the printers. I assume that the corrections/changes I made in the last revision I sent to the law review editors were correctly made. (That the changes were “accepted” in Microsoft Word.) But I don’t know, and I have not yet taken the time to compare the final version I sent them with the version that was printed.
I think it is fair to assume that errors in the substance of the article are solely the author’s, but errors in grammar, spelling, style, and Bluebooking may well be due to the law students who edit law reviews.
September 7, 2010, 12:30 pmGary Curtis says:
Excellent, though I wonder whether such a comment would survive editing!
September 7, 2010, 12:38 pmjustme says:
As long as we’re at it, let’s dispose of all of the name dropping in the same footnote. An article should rise and fall on its merits alone.
September 7, 2010, 1:03 pmkrs says:
It’s a slippery slope from this to getting rid of all of the useless scholarship out there and having litigators cut the superfluous adverbs from their briefs. Are we ready for this new world of lawyers speaking directly and saying something close to what they actually mean?
September 7, 2010, 1:19 pmlucia says:
Probably. But someone mosied up to me at a meeting to discuss somethings he was thinking about to eventually put in a paper. There was no draft.
At the end of the conversation, he asked if he could thank me in the potential paper. I had pretty much disagreed with absolutely everything he had suggested, to the point where if I had been a reviewer I would have suggested rejection owing to numerous points I thought ill-founded. So I told him to not thank me.
Was I concerned someone might think something in the future paper that was not even a draft might reflected my view? Yep. I prefer not to be thanked if I violently disagree to the point that I would be the hostile reviewer had I been invited to review the paper. Should such a thanks appear, I will be very irritated!
On the other hand, another person asked me for comments on a perfectly fine paper. I didn’t think I had the expertise to review much, but commented on what I could. I asked not to be thanked on that one either– but I wouldn’t be irritated if later I saw a thank you.
So, in the end, I sort of like the “all mistakes are mine” disclaimer– even if it’s pointless.
September 7, 2010, 1:32 pmguy in the veal calf office says:
I think its a Polite nicety to the people you are thanking, saying that they provided all sorts of good input and none bad.
I’m not opposed to niceties. When a waiter brings me a refill, I say “thank you” even though its his job and I’m in middle of a sentence addressed to someone else. An author who offers the “errors are mine” convention is doing a similar thing.
September 7, 2010, 1:59 pmKevinM says:
The “blame Sunstein” approach would actually work pretty well. It would be inaccurate only for the small percentage of articles not in fact authored by Sunstein.
September 7, 2010, 3:18 pmSuzy says:
Lucia,
When someone thanks earlier audiences, I do not assume that the named persons have endorsed any of the content. In fact, I tend to assume that some of the comments were critical, and that the named people are merely those generous enough with their time to have offered criticism to the author. In some cases, it’s not even hard to guess exactly what the criticism would have been, given that person’s published views on the subject.
Anyway, I’ve always found the “errors my own” disclaimer useless and even a bit cutesy. At worst, the author insults the reader by suggesting he or she would have attributed this undeserved blame, in the absence of the author’s guidance! Over the top. Let’s all start the trend of refusing it.
September 7, 2010, 4:21 pmohwilleke says:
The standard disclaimer is anything but insignificant.
It caused Scott McInnis, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination to be Governor of Colorado this year to be shamed into defeat, despite having more name recognition, money, brains and support than his GOP opponent, when articles he wrote on water law were discovered to have been plagiarized from early articles written by one of the state’s supreme court justices. It has also caused him to face a grievance in connection with his law license and could cost him a job at a large law firm. And, it has forced him to return $300,000 he was paid to write the articles. As a result, the Democratic candidate for Governor is almost sure to win in Colorado this year.
McInnis attributed the raw plagiarized material to a (well known) research assistant (who had previously run for high political office himself), but the “errors my own” standard that those footnotes have turned into a strong social norm made it impossible for him to pass the buck.
September 7, 2010, 4:28 pmChris Travers says:
Depends on what you mean by “the author’s own.”
On one level, yes, they most definitely are. The Author is in charge of what goes into the article. The analysis is (generic) his and his alone. Feedback, ideas, thoughts, etc. are all helpful but they don’t really change that.
So I would say that the analysis, thought, insight, and synthesis is clearly the author’s own. However, the labor, discussion, etc. is what is shared. Even when thought and speech are kindled brand from brand,* each brand is different and no flame is identical.
This doesn’t mean that credit for help isn’t due. A flame is brighter where many brands are burned together. But that doesn’t necessarily make the thought any less the property of the author.
* From Lee M Hollander’s translation of Havamal:
Kindles brand from brand until all burned is
September 7, 2010, 4:34 pmThus kindles fire from fire
By the words of his mouth a man is known
But by his dumbness a dullard.
Vlad Konings says:
“At the same time, am I right that the “all errors are mine” comment is pretty useless? ”
In any other context, I would assume this was a charm to keep lawyers away. So, yeah.
September 8, 2010, 9:44 amJim says:
How about something along the lines of… “any errors herein are not my fault, and if any errors were to be my fault it is Cass Sunstien”s fault its my fault.”
September 8, 2010, 11:10 amDavid Carroll says:
All errors in the blogpost are yours.
September 8, 2010, 1:40 pmJohn R. Mayne says:
All errors in this paper are the responsibility of Orin Kerr, who is bitter because I didn’t buy him that beer I owe him.
September 8, 2010, 2:15 pmCarl N. Brown says:
I saw a lot of academic articles during 29 years of typesetting the Journal of Economic Literature.
Some needed a roadmap. Seriously.
Sortof random author note from June 1999: “The views expressed
herein are the authors’….” after mentioning commenters, suggesters, the editor, and two referees. The more I look at it, the more I wonder what it means. Yeah, we listened to youse guys, so what?
In the examples given above, whoever wrote “All errors contained herein are mine and mine alone” sounds like someone made it to university without the basic grade school lesson on sharing with the classmates.
[b]
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