A law review is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, normally published by an organization of students at a law school or through a bar association.[1] The term is also used to describe the extracurricular activity at law schools of publishing the journal.
Law reviews should not be confused with non-scholarly publications such as the New York Law Journal or The American Lawyer, which are independent, professional newspapers and news-magazines that cover the daily practice of law (see legal periodical).
History of the Law Review in the United States
The University of Pennsylvania Law Review is the oldest law review in the US, having published continuously since 1852. [2] Also among the oldest and most storied law review publications are the Albany Law Review, successor to the Albany Law School Journal, which began in 1875 and is the nation's first student-edited law review[citation needed]; Harvard Law Review, beginning in 1887[3]; the Yale Law Journal, beginning in 1891[citation needed]; the Columbia Law Review, successor to the Columbia Jurist, beginning in 1885; the West Virginia Law Review, beginning in 1894[citation needed]; the Dickinson Law Review, beginning in 1897[4]; the Michigan Law Review, beginning in 1902[citation needed]; Northwestern University Law Review, beginning in 1906; Georgetown Law Journal, beginning in 1912[5]; the Virginia Law Review, beginning in 1913[6]; the California Law Review, beginning in 1912 and the nation's first law review published west of Illinois[7]; the Tulane Law Review, beginning in 1916[8]; the Texas Law Review, beginning in 1921[9]; the Temple Law Review, beginning in 1927;[10] the University of Chicago Law Review, beginning in 1933; and the Stanford Law Review, founded in 1948.[11]
Academic journals
The primary function of a law review is to provide a vehicle for academic publishing in the field of law. The vast majority of law review articles are written by law professors, although it is not uncommon to find articles written by judges and legal practitioners as well. Many law reviews also publish articles written by law students, normally called "notes" and "comments."[12] Law review articles serve an important purpose in that they express the ideas of legal experts with regard to the direction the law should take in certain areas. Such writings have proven influential in the development of the law, and have frequently been cited as persuasive authority by the United States Supreme Court and other courts throughout the United States. However, this influence may have been diminishing over recent decades. [13]
Law reviews also provide necessary background research to legal practitioners. Student-written articles in particular, which may not be able to influence judicial opinions to the same extent as professionally written articles, add to the legal discourse primarily by providing concise and well-researched background material on distinct legal issues or particularly important cases.
Almost every major American law school publishes a law review. Generally, each school's law review, also referred to as the "main" or "flagship journal", publishes articles dealing with all areas of law. This review is normally named after the law school (e.g., the Stanford Law Review, or the Wisconsin Law Review, or the Harvard Law Review). Some other schools do not call their flagship journal a "law review" but, rather, use the term "law journal" (e.g., the Yale Law Journal, or the Rutgers Law Journal, or the Duke Law Journal). Additionally, most schools also publish secondary publications - journals that deal with a particular area of the law. Typically, these journals publish only articles that focus on a specific area of law, such as international law, environmental law, or human rights (e.g., the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, the Cornell International Law Journal or the North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology). These are often referred to as "specialty law journals" or "satellite journals." There are also a small number of journals focusing on statutory, regulatory, and public policy issues (e.g., the Journal of Legislation or the NYU Journal of Legislation & Public Policy).
Student-run publications
United States
As law professor Erwin N. Griswold wrote of the Harvard Law Review: "Some people are concerned that a major legal periodical in the United States is edited and managed by students. It is an unusual situation, but it started that way, and it developed mightily from its own strength."[14] During the 1990s, the American Bar Association followed suit and began coordinating its own practitioner journals with law schools, courting student editorial bodies for publications including Administrative Law Review, The International Lawyer, Public Contract Law Journal, and The Urban Lawyer.[15] Despite Griswold's confidence in student editors, criticism of this practice continues. In 2004, Judge Richard Posner wrote a scathing attack entitled "Against the Law Reviews" in the magazine Legal Affairs.[16]
Canada
In Canada, the leading law reviews are the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review, the McGill Law Journal/Revue de droit de McGill, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, and the Alberta Law Review. These publications are among the most-cited law reviews by the Supreme Court of Canada, which also cites frequently from leading American law review articles. Membership requires demanding time commitments, and many editors move on to top clerkships or eventually join the legal professoriate in Canada.
Continental Europe
Outside of North America, student-run law reviews are the exception rather than the norm. In Continental Europe law reviews are almost uniformly edited by academics. However, a small number of student-edited law reviews have recently sprung into existence in Germany (Ad Legendum, Bucerius Law Journal, Goettingen Journal of International Law, StudZR, ). In relation to the law of the European Union, the leading journals such as the Common Market Law Review are also not student run. In the Balkans, the Belgrade Law Review, also called the Annals of the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, is one of the most cited.
United Kingdom
Within the Commonwealth, all of the leading law reviews are similarly edited and run by academics. American exceptionalism may be explicable on the basis that in the United States law is studied as a graduate degree, which is not the position in almost all other countries in the world. The leading law reviews in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth more generally are the Law Quarterly Review, the Modern Law Review, the Cambridge Law Journal and the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.
In the United Kingdom, the UCL Jurisprudence Review was the first student law review when it began publishing in 1994. Since then, the Cambridge Student Law Review, Edinburgh Student Law Review[1], UCL Human Rights Review and King's Student Law Review[2] have also emerged.
Ireland
In Ireland, the leading student law reviews are Trinity College Law Review, the UCD Law Review and Irish Student Law Review.
Nordic Countries
In Iceland, Úlfljótur Law Review, has been in publication since 1947. In 2007 it celebrated it´s 60th anniversary. Since it´s creation in 1947 it has been edited and run by students at the Department of Law, University of Iceland. Úlfljótur Law Review is the most senior of all academic journals still in publication at the university and held in great respect by Icelandic jurists and legal scholars.
In Finland, Helsinki Law Review, edited by students at the University of Helsinki, has been active since 2007. Earlier, University of Turku published Turku Law Journal from 1999 to 2003.
Sweden's first law review is Juridisk Publikation. The first number of Juridisk Publikation came out in April 2009.
Australia
In Australia, the leading student-edited peer-reviewed academic law reviews are the Melbourne University Law Review and Sydney Law Review, although the Melbourne University Law Review regularly outperforms Sydney Law Review on impact, citation in journal and cases and combined rankings. [3] These publications are among the most-cited law reviews by the High Court of Australia and among the most cited non-US reviews by US journals. [4] The top international law journal in Australia is the Melbourne Journal of International Law, also a student-edited peer-reviewed academic law review. [5] The Melbourne Journal of International Law is also considered to be more influential and prestigious than most generalist law reviews in Australia. [6] The top ten ranked Australian law reviews, according to impact, citations and combined rankings, are [7]:
| Rank |
Journal Combined |
| 1 |
Melbourne University Law Review |
| 2 |
The Sydney Law Review |
| 3 |
Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy |
| 4 |
The University of New South Wales Law Journal |
| 5 |
Federal Law Review |
| 6 |
Australian Journal of Corporate Law |
| 7 |
Journal of Contract Law |
| 7 |
Torts Law Journal |
| 7 |
The University of New South Wales Law Journal |
| 10 |
The Australian Law Journal |
Brazil
In Brazil, law reviews are usually run by academics as well, but there are efforts by students to change this. The University of Brasilia Law Students Review (REDUnB) was reborn in 2007, and is now on its 8th edition. However, academics and official rankings usually refuse to evaluate student law reviews as "equals". To pursue Academic recognition by the Brazilian Ministry of Education, Review bodies must include post-graduated and ranked academics, which prevents students law reviews to even be recognized or compared to other similar legal periodicals.
Online legal research providers
Online legal research providers such as Westlaw and LexisNexis give users access to the complete text of most law reviews published beginning from the late 1980s. Another such service, Heinonline, provides actual scans of the pages of law reviews going back to the 1850s. On 17 March 1995, the Web Journal of Current Legal Issues, became the first law review available exclusively on the Internet.
Student activity
Membership on the law review staff is highly sought after by some law students, as it often has a significant impact on their subsequent careers as attorneys. Many federal judges and partners at the most prestigious law firms were members or editors of their school's law review. There are a number of reasons why journal membership is desired by some students :
- some see the intense writing, research and editing experience as invaluable to the student's development as an attorney;
- others see the selection process as helping differentiate the best and the brightest from an already strong group of law students.
At schools with more than one law review, membership on the main or flagship journal is normally considered more prestigious than membership on a specialty law journal. In any case, membership on any such journal is a valuable credential when searching out employment after law school.
The paths to membership vary from law school to law school, and also from journal to journal, but generally contain a few of the same basic elements. Most law reviews select members after their first year of studies either through a writing competition (often referred to as "writing on" to the law review), their first-year grades (referred to as "grading on" to the law review) or some combination thereof.[17] A number of schools will also grant membership to students who independently submit a publishable article. The write-on competition usually requires applicants to compose a written analysis of a specific legal topic, often a recent Supreme Court decision. The written submissions are often of a set length, and applicants are sometimes provided with some or all of the background research. Submissions normally are graded blindly, with submissions identified only by a number which the graders will not be able to connect to a particular applicant. A student who has been selected for law review membership is said to have "made the law review."
Secondary journals vary widely in their membership process. For example, at Yale Law School, the only one of its nine journals that has a competitive membership process is the flagship Yale Law Journal—all others are open to any Yale Law student who wishes to join. By contrast, other secondary journals may have their own separate membership competition, or may hold a joint competition with the main law review (with the primary journal usually getting first choice).
A law review's membership is normally divided into staff members and editors. On most law reviews, all 2Ls (second-year students) are staff members while some or all 3Ls (third-year students) serve as editors. 3Ls also typically fill the senior editorial staff positions, including senior articles editor, senior note & comment editor, senior managing editor, and, the most prestigious of all, editor-in-chief of the law review. (Upon graduation, the editor-in-chief of the law review can often expect to be highly recruited by the most prestigious law firms.) As members, students are normally expected to :
- write a note or comment of publishable quality (although it need not actually be published), and to
- edit and cite-check the articles that are being published by the law review, ensuring that references support what the author claims they support and that footnotes are in proper Bluebook or ALWD format, depending on the publication's preference.
The editorial staff is normally responsible for reviewing and selecting articles for publication, managing the editing process, and assisting members in writing their notes and comments. Depending on the law school, students may receive academic credit for their work on the law review, although some journals are entirely extracurricular.
Notes
- ^ The New York International Law Review, for example, is published by the New York State Bar Association instead of a law school.
- ^ http://www.pennumbra.com/about/
- ^ http://www.harvardlawreview.org/Centennial.shtml
- ^ http://www.dsl.psu.edu/journals/lawreview/Podviafinal.pdf
- ^ http://www.georgetownlawjournal.com/about/
- ^ http://www.virginialawreview.org/page.php?s=general&p=about
- ^ http://www.californialawreview.org,
- ^ http://www.law.tulane.edu/tlsjournals/lawreview/index.aspx?id=2560&ekmensel=2a0cb046_160_0_2560_1
- ^ http://www.texaslrev.com
- ^ http://law.bepress.com/templelr/
- ^ http://lawreview.stanford.edu
- ^ The traditional distinction between "notes" and "comments" is that a comment (sometimes called a "case comment") is an analysis of the holding in a specific court case, while a note is focused on either legislation or on a more general legal theory or principle.
- ^ Adam Liptak When Rendering Decisions, Judges Are Finding Law Reviews Irrelevant. New York Times. 19 March 2007.
- ^ Erwin N. Griswold, The Harvard Law Review - Glimpses of Its History as Seen by an Aficionado (1987).
- ^ The Administrative Law Review and The International Lawyer continue to maintain some of the highest circulation rates in the legal community despite the transition to student editors.
- ^ Legal Affairs: "Against the Law Reviews"
- ^ Wes Henricksen, Making Law Review: The Expert's Guide to Mastering the Write-On Competition (2008).
See also
External links
