Legal Commentary

Student law-review editors are great.  How many people, after all, are willing to read our work closely enough to offer detailed, line-by-line feedback?  But sometimes it feels like they're demanding adherence to institutional rules just for the sake of following the rules, and not because they make the article better.  Case in point: parentheticals.  Parentheticals are wildly out of control.  Since 2007 or so, journals seem to have decided that even see citations need parentheticals.  My question: why?  Isn't this madness?

First, let's take a large leap of faith and assume that there are people other than the editors themselves (and maybe later RA's looking to steal citations) who read footnotes. 

Ok, we've lept.  So, what value does the parenthetical add to a see citation?  Isn't the point of a "see" cite that the link between the text and the source is inferential but obvious?  R1.2(a).

Now, some might say, "ok, they're pointless, but so what?"  (I hate that "some" dude.  But he does make a good straw man.)  Here's the thing: the editors demand them.  So your choices are 1. write them yourself, wasting hours and (in an era of word count limits) words that could be used in ways that someone would actually care about; or 2a. let the editors write them, and then spend hours correcting them; or 2b. let editors write them, and then have the rare reader who looks at the parenthicals think you don't understand your own argument.  2a. and 2b. also come with the (small, one hopes) risk that editors will reject a submission because it is insufficiently parenthetical-ed.  I mean, that would be a ridiculous reason to reject an article, but who knows why they do what they do?

Who will stand up for the see cite parenthetical?  Editors?  Anyone?  Bueller?