The Value of Legal Writing, Law Review, and Publication (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2016
What is a law review article? Does America know? How might we help America in this regard? Here, we approach the first question on the bias: As we have found, a growing body of learning and empirical evidence shows that genres are not merely forms, but forms that anticipate their substance. In this Article, then, we try to capture this action by undertaking the first and only comprehensive "performative study" of the genre of the law review article.
Last writes? The law review in the age of cyberspace
First Monday, 1996
This article reassesses the history and future of the law review in light of changing technological and academic conditions. It analyzes why law reviews developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and describes how three different waves of criticism have reflected shifting professorial, professional and pedagogical concerns about the genre. Recent editorial reforms and the inauguration of on-line services and electronic law journals appear to solve some of the law review's traditional problems, but the author suggests that these procedural and technological modifications leave the basic criticisms of the law review system unmet. In this context, the author proposes that legal writers self-publish on the World Wide Web, as he has done in an extended version of the present piece. This strategy would give legal writers more control over the substance and form of their scholarship, would create more opportunities for spontaneity and creativity, and would promote more direct dialogue between legal thinkers.
2012
An analysis of the twenty-first century Justices’ citations of law review scholarship—how often they cite articles, the professional identities of authors of the cited articles, and the rankings of the law reviews in which the cited articles appear—provides an excellent prism through which to assess today’s law reviews. In addition to having had varied and rich legal careers as practitioners, policy-makers, and lower court judges, the majority of the current Justices were, at earlier points in their careers, full-time law professors. Presumably, the Justices are able to separate the wheat from the chaff in the law reviews. The present study examined whether something meaningful can be gleaned from an analysis of the modern Justices’ practice of citing law review articles. This article describes the results of an empirical study of the nearly two thousand “signed” opinions authored by the Justices—majority opinions, plurality opinions, concurring opinions, and dissenting opinions iss...
Legal Journals: In Pursuit of a More Scientific Approach
European Journal of Legal Education, 2005
In 1942, the American sociologist of science, Robert Merton, suggested as one of the norms of academic science that universities ought to be places of 'organised scepticism'. Academic law journals should contribute to this mission, since the quality of an academic discipline largely depends on the quality of its publication culture. Informed by the American experiences including the dominant law reviews, and by contrast an international medical journal, this article tries to obtain a better view of the publication culture involving legal scholarship and the possibilities of improving it. The American format of the law review is generally very distant from the form of publication used in most other disciplines and from legal publications in many other parts of the world. One of the major problems of the legal discipline is that non-Americans generally do not publish in American law reviews vice versa. As a consequence, a proper, worldwide academic exchange of ideas is hindered. With the exception of a few journals, the world remains divided. This inhibits progress in legal scholarship. If a 'world format' for a legal article is to be adopted, the European model seems more appropriate than the American one.
Style Matters: A Review Essay on Legal Writing
Yale Law Journal, 1982
Lawyers are, among other things, professional writers. Because they are paid well for their prose, it is reasonable to assume that most of them write well. This assumption may be reasonable, but it is false. Most lawyers-even many who have risen to the top of the profession-write badly. Let us look at three examples of the kind of writing we read every day. Each was written by a successful lawyer-one judge, one professor, and one practitioner.' I selected the judge and the practitioner because they have published articles on legal writing, the professor because he has been praised for his prose. My first example comes from an opinion discussing the withholding of federal revenue-sharing funds. A judge of the United States Court of Appeals wrote in dissent: f Associate Professor of Law, University of Connecticut. I would like to thank the people who commented on an earlier draft of this essay:
A preliminary analysis of law review notes
English for Specific Purposes, 2000
While our understanding of legal English as used in professional or legislative contexts has been growing, our understanding of English in academic legal contexts is very limited. Moreover, research in English for Academic Purposes has focused largely on areas other than law and therefore often does not apply. This is particularly true for research paper writing, given the discourse conventions of legal research or seminar papers. The study presented here oers an analysis of published student-written legal research papers, which can serve as a model for the teaching of seminar paper writing. After a discussion of some general characteristics of these research papers, we focus our detailed analysis on the introductory sections, and show how they are both similar to and dierent from those found in research article (RA) introductions as described in Swales (1990).
The Law Review Approach: What the Humanities Can Learn
Academic Questions, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2013
This essay describes how the law review process generally works and then discusses what the humanities can learn and borrow from the law review process. It ends by advocating for a hybrid law review/peer review approach to publishing. The law review process is not a panacea for our publishing ills. It has several drawbacks and shortcomings. This essay highlights the positives and notes some of the negatives of the law review publishing process, but a lengthy explanation of all that is good or bad about law reviews is not my aim. Every law review has its idiosyncrasies and methodologies, but most share certain overarching procedures and protocols that can be evaluated in terms of their similarity.
Last Writes? Re-Assessing the Law Review in the Age of Cyberspace
New York University Law Review, 1996
Professor Hibbitts reassesses the history and future of the law review in light of changing technological and academic conditions. He analyzes why law reviews developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and shows how three different waves of criticism have reflected shifting professorial, professional, and pedagogical concerns about the genre Recent editorial reforms and the inauguration of on-line services and electronic law journals appear to solve some of tie law review's traditional problems, but Professor Hibbitts suggests that these procedural and technological modifications leave the basic criticisms of the law review system unmet In this context, Professor Hibbitts proposes that legal writers self-publish
Law Journals: From Discourse to Pedagogy
Legal Education Review, 2015
Law journals 1 are a seemingly perennial feature of the university law school landscape in common law jurisdictions. To an uninformed observer, they may appear as benign manifestations of university life and as refined vehicles for academic debate about theory and policy. This image belies the fact that they have been the subject, especially in the United States, of highly polemical and often vociferous battles about their worth and proper role. A large amount of literature has been published in American law journals about the journals themselves. The academic literature on Australian law journals, by contrast, has to date been relatively undeveloped. 2 Law journals in Australia and the United Kingdom have attracted little attention and have tended to escape the prolonged controversies surrounding their publication in the United States. 3 Whereas American attention has focused to a significant degree