Last October, I wrote about a controversial Bluebook proposal: Any case that involves slavery would require a parenthetical disclaimer. For example “(enslaved party)” or “(enslaved person at issue).” So far, this change has not come to pass. But with the hard-left turn of law reviews, I doubt there is enough resistance to block this change. The upshot of this policy will be to simply cancel certain citations. Authors will not want to be seen as promoting slavery-based jurisprudence. So those cases will simply fall into desuetude.
This weaponization of footnotes will not be limited to slavery. Journals will continue to impose more control over scholarship to pursue inclusion. Professor Brian Leiter writes about a referee report from a philosophy journal. The “very first comment” criticized the author for not citing diverse authors.