Since Justice Brandeis started conscientiously citing law review articles in landmark Supreme Court opinions, these publications have been the principal venue for American legal scholarship and innovation.1 Over the years, critics have questioned their value;2 nonetheless the law review remains the best channel for advanced legal thinking.3 Recently, electronic access to scholarly information has begun to inspire changes in library collection policies,4 editorial practices5 and modes of publication.6 Thus a new legal research environment is in the throes of creation.
This article is a collection of selected resources about the law review publishing process, emerging trends in the information cycle, and practical guides for developing an article and getting it to press.
TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS
Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship (2009)
“On 7 November 2008, the directors of the law libraries at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, the University of Texas, and Yale University met in Durham, North Carolina at the Duke Law School. That meeting resulted in the ‘Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship,’ which calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats.”
Durham Statement on Open Access One Year Later: Preservation and Access to Legal Scholarship (2010)
“The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship calls for US law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in ‘stable, open, digital formats.’ The Statement asks for two things: 1) open access publication of law school-published journals; and 2) an end to print publication of law journals. This paper was written as background for a July 2010 American Association of Law Libraries conference program on the preservation implications of the call to end print publication.”
Durham Statement Two Years Later: Open Access in the Law School Journal Environment, 103 Law Libr. J. 39 (2011)
“The Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship, drafted by a group of academic law library directors, was promulgated in February 2009. It calls for two things: (1) open access publication of law school-published journals; and (2) an end to print publication of law journals, coupled with a commitment to keeping the electronic versions available in ‘stable, open, digital formats.’ The two years since the Statement was issued have seen increased publication of law journals in openly available electronic formats, but little movement toward all-electronic publication. This article discusses the issues raised by the Durham Statement, the current state of law journal publishing, and directions forward.”
Empirical Assessment of the Supreme Court’s Use of Legal Scholarship (SSRN 2011)
“Derogating legal scholarship has become something of a sport for leading figures in the federal judiciary. Perhaps the chief antagonist in recent years has been none other than the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr. His most recent salvo includes the claim that because law review articles are not of interest to the bench, he has trouble remembering the last law review article he read. This claim, and others by the Chief Justice, may represent the end of an uneasy detente concerning the topic of the utility of legal scholarship to the bench and bar. At a minimum, Justice Roberts’s recent comments represent a vigorous invitation to a discussion, which this article accepts. To that discussion we contribute an empirical study that is based on an original and unprecedented body of data derived from every Supreme Court decision over the last sixty-one years. This article presents several surprising results and makes two major novel contributions. The first is evidence describing the amount and patterns of the Supreme Court’s use of legal scholarship over the last sixty-one years. The second, and perhaps most striking contribution of this article, is empirical evidence on the nature and quality of the Court’s use of scholarship. This article provides the first report, as far as we can determine, of evidence that the Supreme Court not only often uses legal scholarship, it also disproportionately uses scholarship when cases are either more important or more difficult to decide. It thus presents results strongly counterintuitive to claims that scholarship is useless or irrelevant to judges and practitioners. The article also discusses areas for future work.”
Idea of the Law Review: Scholarship, Prestige and Open Access, 10 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 901 (2006)
“This Essay is a rigorous and serious account of how the current economy of academic legal publishing thwarts efforts by authors and journals to supplant that economy via open access publishing and distribution models. Law professors, law schools, and universities generally like the system as it is. Instead, the Essay argues that open access models must complement that economy, rather than supplant it. This appears to be a paper about law reviews, which happens to be situated in a conversation about open access. It’s really a paper about open access, which happens to be situated in a conversation about law reviews.”
From a Trickle to a Flood: A Case Study of the Current Index to Legal Periodicals to Examine the Swell of American Law Journals Published in the Last Fifty Years (SSRN 2011)
“Using the lists journals indexed in the Current Index to Legal Periodicals from the last fifty years, this article analyzes the increase in the number of general law reviews, specialized law journals, student-edited journals, and peer-edited and refereed law journals over the last half-century. Data from the Current Index to Legal Periodicals was combined with further data collected from HeinOnline, American Bar Association statistics, and U.S. News & World Report statistics. Comparison of this data shows not only a massive increase in the number of law journal titles being published, but also suggests a correlation between the number of law journals published by a law school and its student population, length of time that it has been accredited by the American Bar Association, and its U.S. News & World Report ranking.”
Guide to Short Form Open Access Legal Publications, LLRX.com, July 27, 2007
“Short form open access legal publications provide a forum for a wide range of scholarly and timely exchanges on new developments and issues. [citation omitted]. Of particular interest are the law review companions. The companion publications fit into a growing niche of multi-format interactive online journals. They usually seek responses to articles appearing in their main law reviews and solicit original scholarship or viewpoints on current topics. Many of the publishers invite responses or discussion, via site blogs, on subjects raised in their short form articles. Overall, they offer a new conduit for debate and discussion of legal issues, and a new research and current awareness tool.”
HeinOnline and Law Review Citation Patterns, 103 Law Lib. J. 55 (2011)
“The authors tested the proposition that the ubiquity of HeinOnline in law libraries would alter law review citation patterns. Has HeinOnline’s provision of the full runs of law reviews in full text led to more citations to older materials? This article reports the results of the study they undertook to test this theory.”
Is Legal Scholarship Out of Touch? An Empirical Analysis of the Use of Scholarship in Business Law Cases, 19 U. Miami Bus. L. Rev. 1 (2011)
“Commentators have observed two apparent trends in the use of legal scholarship by the judiciary. First, judges now cite law review articles in their opinions with less frequency. Second, despite this general decline in the invocation of legal scholarship, judges now cite articles in specialty journals with more frequency.
Some commentators attribute the apparent decline in the courts’ use of legal scholarship to the increasingly theoretical and impractical nature of that scholarship. A few studies even suggest that the increasing use of specialty journals by the courts reflects the gap between the content of legal scholarship in general law reviews and the practical needs of the judiciary. Others defend the academy, taking the position that academics continue to write meaningful doctrinal articles and that theoretical and interdisciplinary pieces encourage broader intellectual discourse regarding legal issues.
This study analyzes and refutes the claim of the diminishing role of legal scholarship in the context of business law cases. Specifically, the study focuses on the use of legal scholarship by Delaware state courts from 1997 to 2007 and then on an interval basis dating to 1965. The study finds no general downward trend in the use of legal scholarship in business law cases. Moreover, the study undertakes a detailed analysis of factors predicting a court’s likelihood to cite legal scholarship. Overall, the study provides a unique insight into when, why and how courts invoke legal scholarship in business law cases and, consequently, may help inform future scholarship intended to influence court decisions in this discipline.”
Law Review Article Selection Process: Results from a National Study, 71 Alb. L. Rev. 565 (2008)
“The student-edited law review has been a much criticized institution. Many commentators have expressed their belief that students are unqualified to determine which articles should be published in which journals, but these discussions have been largely based on anecdotal evidence of how journals make publication decisions. It was against that backdrop that we undertook a national survey of law reviews in an attempt to determine how student editors responsible for making publication decisions went about their task. This article compiles the results of that survey, which received 191 responses from 163 different journals. We analyzed 56 factors that influence the selection process and then grouped similar items together to form 17 constructs using factor analysis. Finally, we disaggregated the results to determine whether the results were significantly different based on the prestige of the journals involved. While many of our results confirm what has been widely assumed to be true, there are also some surprising findings. We found, for example, that Articles Editors seek to publish articles from well-known and widely-respected authors. It appears, however, that editors do not assume that prestigious authors produce the best scholarship, but instead they pursue the work of well-known authors because it can increase their journals’ prestige within the legal academic community. The survey reveals that editors are not nearly as likely to seek out articles dealing with hot or trendy topics as some commentators have assumed, and that author diversity plays almost no role in the article selection process. We hope that our study will provide some structure to the ongoing debate about how best to use students in the law review publication process and will allow a more informed consideration of whether students are sufficiently well-trained to evaluate articles and whether they are using the proper criteria.”
Law Review Is Dead; Long Live The Law Review: A Closer Look at the Declining Judicial Citation of Legal Scholarship, 45 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1185 (2010)
“Our presentation will proceed in five Parts. In the interest of providing context for the subsequent Parts, Part I offers a short, general history of law review citation by courts, including the debate surrounding its decline. Part II describes a ten-year update to the 1998 Oklahoma Study, using the same methodology as was employed in that study. Part III then highlights and discusses several possible explanations for the apparent decline in judicial citation of law reviews. Part IV compares the traditional citation study methodology with our methodology and explains how our methodology attempts to account for the explanations provided in Part V. Part V analyzes our results and reflects on them. Finally, the Study concludes by considering the institution of the law review in light of our results and by asking how law reviews might adapt to the changing legal landscape to ensure their continued vitality.”
Legal Scholarship Carries a High Price, Nat’l L.J., Apr. 20, 2011
“What is the total cost of a law review article written by a tenured professor at a top-flight law school? It’s in the neighborhood of $100,000, according to Hofstra University School of Law professor Richard Neumann. His estimate factors in the salary and benefits for a tenured professor at a high-paying school who spends between 30% and 50% of his or her time on scholarship and publishes one article per year. It also takes into account possible research grants, which many schools offer professors to help fund their scholarly work, and the costs for research assistants. Neumann delivered that staggering estimate during a panel discussion on leveraging tenured faculty during the Future Ed conference in New York on April 16; the meeting drew more than 100 academics to discuss innovation in legal education. The conference was sponsored by New York Law School and Harvard Law School.”
National Conference of Law Reviews
“The National Conference of Law Reviews (NCLR) is a voluntary organization of law reviews in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The NCLR is devoted to helping its members to better serve both the academic and legal communities. In pursuit of this goal, the NCLR holds an annual four-day conference each spring. The conference offers law review editors from member publications the opportunity to exchange ideas on issues common to student-edited law journals.” See NCLR Constitution and Michael L. Closen & Robert M. Jarvis, The National Conference of Law Reviews Model Code of Ethics: Final Text and Comments, 75 Marq. L. Rev. 509 (1992).
Navigating the Law Review Article Selection Process: An Empirical Study of Those with All the Power — Student Editors, 59 S.C. L. Rev. 175 (2007)
“This study seeks to explore these questions and add to the growing body of empirical research on law review article selection. The study examines how law review editors at all levels of the law school ‘tier’ system – Top 15, Top 25, Top 50, Top 100, Third Tier, Fourth Tier and Specialty Journals) 14 – weigh the importance of author credentials, topic, format, and timing of an article submission in making their selection decisions. Although the study found that most editors consider each of these factors to some degree, the data also suggest that the higher ranked journals rely more heavily on author credentials than lower ranked journals. Specifically, editors at higher tiered law schools were highly influenced by where an author has previously published. Further, while not a single editor at a Top 15 school considered an author’s practice experience in making a publication decision, a majority of the editors at lower tiered journals rated practice experience as an important factor in article selection. While the study participants almost unanimously agreed that they were influenced by the topic of an article, there were important differences among the law schools concerning the actual topics about which they would be most or least likely to publish. In addition to describing the survey results in more detail, this Article will offer specific commentary from the student editors about their means of selecting law review articles.”
One Journal at a Time, The Recorder, June 13, 2011
“Is it becoming easier to find that law review article on point? As more journals become available on the Internet through an initiative called Open Access, published legal scholarship – once only available in print form from law libraries, or online through proprietary databases – will reach a wider audience. This is a movement not only benefiting practicing attorneys, but historians, scholars and members of the public with legal research interests, who will be able to access legal scholarship by simply googling a topic.
Why is this happening? The born-digital movement has advanced the technology, and shrinking library budgets have propelled the movement. Do all, or most, student-run law journals publish electronically? We would like to think that in a few short years, many law schools will join the Open Access movement by placing free copies of law reviews online. Law schools are able to keep archives in institutional repositories and can then move away from paper production. This transition not only helps ease law library resource budgets, but also focuses on ensuring permanent access to digital legal information. The Google effect of Open Access also guarantees that a body of legal scholarship will reach greater numbers of readers, i.e., those who might not have access to proprietary databases.”
Paper Versus Electronic Sources for Law Review Cite Checking: Should Paper Be the Gold Standard?, 97 Law. Libr. J. 31 (2005)
“Despite law students’ reliance on electronic sources for legal research, a survey confirmed that many journals make their staff members check authors’ citations against paper sources. Rumsey and Schwartz argue that the advent of image-based document collections should change this practice, making life easier for law students and law school librarians.”
Print or Perish? Authors’ Attitudes Toward Electronic-Only Publication of Law Journals (SSRN 2011)
“An increasing number of U.S. law journals post at least current issues in freely accessible PDF and (in some cases) HTML formats on their web sites. Yet, perhaps without exception, the journals that make their articles freely available on their websites also continue to publish print issues in the face of declining subscription numbers, and law libraries’ growing disinterest in collecting and preserving journals in print. As universities reduce staff, freeze open positions, eliminate salary increases, and cut library budgets, why have law schools continued to subsidize print publication of journals that are accessible in electronic formats? Among the reasons suggested for this is the possible impact of electronic-only publishing on a journal’s reputation and ability to attract authors. This paper reports on the results of a survey of law journal authors’ attitudes toward electronic-only law journals.”
Ranking Law Reviews by Author Prominence—Ten Years Later, 99 Law Libr. J. 573 (2007)
“In an update to their 1997 survey, Professors Jarvis and Coleman again rank student-edited law reviews based on the prominence of their lead article authors. This time, Yale was found to have the greatest drawing power, followed by Harvard and Columbia.”
Scholarship Advice for New Law Professors in the Electronic Age, 16 Widener L.J. 947 (2007)
“The article suggests that the legal academy is in a time of transition between promotion and tenure rules based on traditional methods of publication and contemporary electronic and interdisciplinary possibilities for publication. While a number of articles contain recommendations for newer law professors about the process of scholarship, most of those articles are between five and twenty years old and do not address publishing in the age of blogs, expedited reviews, electronic submissions, and open-access databases. The substance and length of what law professors write, the formats in which they do so, and the fora in which they publish are evolving. This article breaks new ground in offering advice for those who have recently joined the academy on how to comply with promotion and tenure guidelines while taking advantage of publishing opportunities in the electronic age. Although it gives special emphasis to newer faculty and to issues raised by modern technology, the article is not limited to those sorts of issue. Professors who have been writing for years may find some useful nuggets about citation practices regarding blogs, the impact of recent law review limits on article length, electronic methods of browsing journals and articles in other disciplines, access to government documents, and posting on open-access archives.”
Selecting Legal Periodicals (Washington and Lee University School of Law)
“What cost-effective legal periodicals should be purchased with a given budget. The Cites per Cost ranking is the average yearly number of cites to the journal divided by the annual US$ cost to U.S. academic libraries. So e.g., a journal with 600 cites per annum and costing $60 would show ’10’ in the Cites per Cost column. Journals that are free are ignored for the purpose of this ranking. Strictly they should have an infinite score (cites/0) and be at the top of the ranking, however the purpose of this ranking is to present a cost-effective analysis for purchasing decisions, so ranking free journals seems to counter that purpose. ‘Average yearly number of cites’ is the yearly average of cites as determined by the law journal rankings in the law journal submission information data, and its inclusion methodology (described further above) should be kept in mind. The year the journal began publication is also considered for recently started journals. So the actual calculation is: Years Published = Survey-Year – Year Journal Began + 1 (if > 8 Then = 8) Cites per Cost = (Total-Cites / (Annual Cost * Years Published)) (rounded to two decimal places).”
Why Write?, 107 Mich. L. Rev. 881 (2009)
“What is the purpose of legal scholarship? The foreword to the University of Michigan Law Review’s book review issue provides an excellent occasion for addressing this question. This in turn requires considering who are the audiences for legal scholarship and what should count as legal scholarship. This essay offers thoughts and suggestions on these important topics.”
WRITING ARTICLES
Finding a Topic/Case on Which to Write (BNA)
“Finding a Topic/Case on Which to Write – PowerPoint show: New members of Law Reviews and Journals often have difficulty locating a topic or case on which to write. BNA has many publications which are excellent resources for student writers beginning their search for a topic. Use the following presentation to introduce students to some BNA publications they may find useful in the writing process.”
Guide to Law Review Research (Westlaw)
“This student guide for law review and journal research shows you how to use Westlaw databases and services to perform a number of tasks, including the following: selecting a topic for a law review or journal article; performing a preemption check; developing your topic; checking citations and quotations included in an article; using The West Education Network (TWEN) to improve law review and journal management.”
How to Write a Law Review Article, 20 U. San Francisco L. Rev. 445 (1986)
“I [Prof. Richard Delgado] wrote this article to explain in simple fashion some rules, conventions, and shortcuts I have learned over the years as a legal writer. I explain the various steps one ought to consider in writing a law review article, the types and genres of such articles, and a few tips having to do with submission and marketing of one’s work.”
Legal Research & Writing for Scholarly Publication (UDC David A. Clarke School of Law)
This article addresses the following subjects: I. Finding a topic; II. Research: The pre-emption check, literature review, and more; III. General advice for writing for publication in law reviews; IV. Advice for new scholars; V. Sharing the article for prepublication comment; VI. Writing an abstract; and VII. Submitting the article to law reviews for publication.
In Search of the Read Footnote: Techniques for Writing Legal Scholarship and Having It Published. 6 Legal Writing 229 (2000)
“The tips found in this article will help scholarly writers to become more productive and fulfilled. The article also offers ideas that will enable deans and promotion and tenure committees to establish reasonable and achievable writing schedules for all faculty. The benchmarks, mentoring support, and other worthwhile suggestions will aid faculty in quest of achievement, scholarship, promotion, and professional satisfaction. Last but not least, student law journal writers and law students engaged in scholarly writing for seminars should find this article useful. Many of these techniques will make writing more pleasant, productive, and efficient.”
Starting Your Law Review Note (LexisNexis)
“This tutorial will introduce you to many of the research tools from LexisNexis that will help you to tackle the challenge of choosing a topic for your student note, comment or paper.”
Writing for & Publishing in Law Reviews: What Techniques Are Useful for Finding Interesting Topics? (University of Washington Law School updated March 10, 2010 Prepared by Mary Whisner & Ann Hemmens)
“In addition to talking to people (your professors, practicing attorneys, judges etc.), you may find several of these print and online resources helpful in your search for a topic.”
PUBLISHING
ExpressO (Berkeley Electronic Press)
“ExpressO makes law review submissions fast and easy. Have your manuscript delivered to your choice of 750+ law school reviews, including all of the top 100, simply by uploading the electronic file to our site. We deliver, and you avoid the hassles and expenses of photocopying, assembling, and mailing.”
Guide to Publishing Papers (American U. Wash. College of Law 2010)
“This brief guide is designed to help you with the process of publishing your article or paper in a non-WCL publication.”
Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals (SSRN 2011)
“This document contains information about submitting articles to law reviews and journals, including the methods for submitting an article, any special formatting requirements, how to contact them to request an expedited review, and how to contact them to withdraw an article from consideration. It covers 202 law reviews. The document was fully updated in February 2011.”
Law Journals: Submissions and Ranking (Washington and Lee University School of Law)
“The purpose of the Law Journals webpage is to allow authors to find law journals by subject, country, or journal rank (where available), to display journal editorial information, and to facilitate an author’s article submission to those journals.”
Law Review Article Submission Resources (Spring 2008)
“I’m [Prof. Daniel Solove] reprising my post of law review submission resources that I last posted in fall 2007. I assume that most of the information hasn’t changed since then, but I haven’t had a chance to recheck it. So I thought I’d tap the powers of the blogosphere . . . .”
Law Review Electronic Submissions (NKU Chase College of Law)
“The following are law reviews that accept electronic submissions. Additionally, we are gathering information from law schools concerning any upcoming symposia they are offering.”
Legal Scholarship Blog
“This blog features law-related Calls for Papers, Conferences, and Workshops as well as general legal scholarship resources. . . . This blog is managed by faculty and staff at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and the Gallagher Law Library of the University of Washington School of Law.” See Scholarship About Legal Scholarship.
Submission Guide for Online Law Review Supplements, (SSRN ver. 5.0 8/5/2011)
“This document contains information about submitting essays and articles to general online law review supplements. It covers 21 general online law reviews. This document will be updated on an annual basis and as law schools create new online law review supplements.”
Submission of Law Student Articles for Publication (SSRN)
“The purposes of this essay are twofold. First, it offers a number of suggestions for law students (and implicitly for students in other graduate programs) who want to publish their research papers. Second, this essay presents a chart of the policies of 194 law reviews with respect to whether they will publish comments submitted by non-law review members who are students at their home school or notes, comments or articles submitted by law students from other schools.”
Tips on Publishing (Columbia Law School)
“The following tips apply to publication in student-edited law journals.”
LAW REVIEW COMPILATIONS
Directory of Open Access Journals (Lund University Libraries)
“The aim of the Directory of Open Access Journals is to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The Directory aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content. In short a one stop shop for users to Open Access Journals.” See Law
Free Full-Text Online Law Review/Journal Search (ABA)
“This free search engine searches the free full-text of over 400 online law reviews and law journals, as well as document repositories hosting academic papers and related publications such as Congressional Research Service reports. Several of the law reviews and legal journals (such as the Stanford Technology Law Review), working papers, and reports are available online only.”
Law Reviews with Online Content (NY Law School)
“The Mendik Library tracks about 150 law journals that supply, at minimum, their current issue freely available online. We check weekly for new activity and then change the buttons accordingly. A red button means that a new issue has appeared recently. The search bar below checks any given topic in all of the journals we track. Tabbed searching allows you to rerun your search in specific areas such as international law and environmental law.”
Legal Scholarship Network (SSRN)
“The Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) is directed by Bernard Black and Ronald J. Gilson. Black is Professor of Law at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, Professor of Finance at McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, and Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). Gilson is Meyers Professor of Law and Business at the Stanford Law School, and Marc & Eva Stern Professor of Law and Business at the Columbia Law School.”
LexisNexis Directory of Law Reviews
“LexisNexis is pleased to offer the Directory of Law Reviews as a complimentary service to law school professors.”
Open Access Law: Adopting Journals (Science Commons)
“The following journals have adopted the Open Access Law Journal Principles or have policies consistent with them.”
Periodicals Indexed in CILP
“This list identifies law reviews and other legal periodicals that are currently indexed in the Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP).”
United States — Law Reviews and Periodicals (American Law Sources On-line)
“These links point to web pages maintained by U.S.-published law reviews and similar periodical publications, including publications (sometimes called ‘e-journals’) that are published only on the internet.”
1 See Michael L. Closen & Robert J.Dzielak, History and Influence of the Law Review Institution, 30 Akron L. Rev. 15, 26 (1996)(“One of the leading advocates of law review articles was United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. The first time Justice Brandeis cited to a law review article in a Supreme Court opinion was in dissent in the 1917 case of Adams v. Tanner. Later, Justice Brandeis cited to law reviews in opinions that significantly changed the law. For instance, in the landmark case of Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, Justice Brandeis cited to twenty-eight law review articles in his majority opinion. More significant than Justice Brandeis’ citations to twenty-eight law review articles was his reliance on one of those articles. An article published in the Harvard Law Review by Charles Warren titled New Light on the History of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 clearly influenced Justice Brandeis’ opinion.” (footnotes omitted)).
2 See Law Prof. Ifill Challenges Chief Justice Roberts’ Take on Academic Scholarship, American Constitution Society Blog, July 5, 2011 (“Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. at the recent Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference [Washington, DC, June 25, 2011, 30 min.+] grabbed a few relatively easy applause lines – by knocking the work of law professors. Specifically Roberts claimed that legal scholarship is not relevant to the work of lawyers and judges, saying he is on the same page with Judge Harry T. Edwards of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who believes there is a great ‘disconnect between the academy and the profession.'” But see Kenneth F. Ripple, The Role of the Law Review in the Tradition of Judicial Scholarship, 57 N.Y.U. Ann. Surv. Am. L. 429 (2000)(“This article explores one of the most important sources of judicial education, the law review.”). Closen, supra note 1, at 28 (“Cardozo believed that with the enormous increase in legal precedent, courts were turning to law reviews to ‘canalize the stream [of legal precedent] and redeem the inundated fields.’ Not only did law reviews organize and make useful the growing amount of case law, but also charted ‘the line of development and progress on the untrodden regions of the law.’ The vanishing of the prejudice against law reviews was best summed up by Justice Cardozo when he remarked, ‘judges have at last awakened, or at all events a number of them not wholly negligible, to the treasures buried in law reviews.'” (footnotes omitted)).
3 See Closen, supra note 1, at 22-23 (“A major purpose of law reviews is their influence and impact on the development of the law. Although a law review is often one of the sources for a change in the law, an influential law review article is usually not written in proximity to the change in legal thought. A law review article which may eventually influence an area of law is often rejected at first by courts and scholars, is not fully appreciated, or is simply not read at all. However, the law review article’s legal theory or idea may gradually gain acceptance, and an article once discarded or ignored then becomes a leading treatise on that area of law and one of the driving forces behind change. For instance, The Right to Privacy by Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren published in 1890 in the Harvard Law Review, did not gain judicial acceptance until 1905 when the Georgia Supreme Court recognized a right of privacy.” (footnotes omitted))
4 See, e.g., Lee Peoples, Survey of Library Practices Regarding Paper Law Reviews, Law Librarian Blog, Jan. 23, 2006.
5 See, e.g., HighWire Introduces 5-Star Article Rating Feature on SAGE Open, HighWire Stanford University, Sept. 6, 2011.
6 The immediacy of the Internet and social media has led to the invention of short form and online law review supplements. See generally Ken Strutin, Guide to Short Form Open Access Legal Publications, LLRX.com, July 27, 2007. Still in other areas of scholarly publishing, multimedia formats are being explored. See, e.g., Video Abstracts (Dove Press)(“Video abstracts are a new initiative and addition to papers that we are now offering our authors. The videos would be presented by the author, be of 1-4 minutes duration and give an overview of their paper so readers can get an idea of the content and motivation behind the paper. The aim is to enable authors to personally explain the importance of their work to the reader. Video abstracts will enhance the reader’s understanding and appreciation of an article through the accessible presentation of the main results and conclusions reported. To maximize engagement and visibility, authors are encouraged to combine footage of themselves with other relevant material of interest—such as imagery, animations, footage of an experiment running or a lab tour.”). See Dove Press Youtube Channel.