Capitalize "Government"?

A colleague recently asked me about whether government should be capitalized for an article targeted to a legally literate audience in a sentence like this: “The Government argued that failure to protect wolves would negatively affect economic activity.” We often see Government and similar terms capitalized in articles describing litigation. But why? Is it correct usage?

I’d say that’s correct capitalization, though one subject to questions of style. But it is rather peculiar to legal usage, as far as I can tell. I suppose there might be analogous terms in other industries that I don’t know.

I’ve looked at The Bluebook, The Chicago Manual of Style, Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage, The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Usage, and The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage. If I were looking for a precise rule addressing this, I’d say lowercase it. But this smells a lot like the following three situations for which there are definite rules to capitalize. First and most persuasive to me, it’s a really a proper noun. The Bluebook says to capitalize “nouns that identify specific persons, officials, groups, government offices, or government bodies.” The problem there is that this isn’t really specific. It’s the whole U.S. government, but it’s also specifically the U.S. government.

Second, it’s sort of like a defined term, but it doesn’t need definition because we all agree on what it means as a legal usage.

And third, the Bluebook has a list of exceptions to always capitalize for words from Act to Term (of the Court). Bluebook 8(c)(ii). This seems to be one of those “because we say so” exceptions to what is a more generally accepted rule. I would say this list of exceptions could easily be addressed by explaining they are proper nouns or defined terms. With that in mind, though Government isn’t included, it fits the mold, especially when Commonwealth and State are included in the list “when referring to a state as a governmental actor.” In contexts like this, Indiana could be replaced with State, Kentucky with Commonwealth, and the U.S. with Government, and all lawyers worth their salt would know what it referred to.

In my book, each of those is a good reason on its own, and together they make a very solid case to capitalize Government in any writing aimed at a legal audience. But I wouldn’t quibble with someone whose style would demand it be lowercased or, perhaps better, replaced with a more specific term, like the agency or lawyers representing the governmental actor.