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A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical.William H. Putman and Jennifer Albright. "II. Legal periodicals". Legal Research. Third Edition. Cengage Learning. 2015. Pages 241 to 243 et seq. Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing. Fourth Edition. 2018. Pages 193 and 194 et seq. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also provide a scholarly analysis of emerging legal concepts from various topics. The primary function of a law review is to publish scholarship in the field of law. Law reviews publish lengthy, comprehensive treatments of subjects (referred to as "articles"), that are generally written by , and to a lesser extent judges, or legal practitioners. The shorter pieces, attached to the articles, commonly called "notes" and "comments", often are written by law student members of the law review. Law review articles often express the thinking of specialists or experts with regard to problems, in a legal setting, with potential solutions to those problems. Historically, law review articles have been influential in the development of the law; they have been frequently cited as persuasive authority by courts. Some law schools publish specialized reviews, dealing with a particular area of the law, such as civil rights and civil liberties, international law, environmental law, and human rights. Some specialized reviews focus on statutory, regulatory, and public policy issues.
Law reviews are generated in almost all law bodies/institutions worldwide. In the United States and Canada, most law journals are housed at individual law schools and are edited by students, not professional scholars, which is unique of law schools. North American law schools usually have flagship law reviews and several secondary journals dedicated to specific topics. For example, Harvard Law School's flagship journal is the Harvard Law Review, and it has 16 other secondary journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Membership and editorial positions on law journals, especially flagship law reviews, is competitive and traditionally confers honor and prestige. Selection for law review membership is usually based on a combination of students' grades, their performance on a short article-writing competition, as well as an examination on Bluebook legal citation rules.
In addition to rankings that measure impact factor, a number of methods can be used to assess the notability of a law review. A professor at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication averages the annual rankings of: the Washington and Lee University Law School rankings, the average US News Peer Reputation score from the last 10 years, the average ranking of the School in US News of the last 10 years, and Google Scholar metrics for all Law reviews in the United States. There has been a weak correlation between law school ranking and law review citation metrics.
In the United States, law reviews are typically edited by students who are selected to join after successfully completing a "write on competition" at the end of their first year of law school. Grades and class standing are often considered during the application process. Law professor Erwin N. Griswold noted the concern some have about the unusual nature of a publication being run by students and celebrated the impact that it has had in law and legal education. In 1995, Richard Posner argued law reviews had a higher standard of fact-checking to faculty-run journals or published books, and described them as indispensable resources for law clerks, judges, practitioners and professors. He also argued that faculty-run journals are generally better at aspects including article selection and editing interdisciplinary papers.
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The University of Bologna Law Review is a student-run law journal published by the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna, and officially sponsored by Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP and the International Chamber of Commerce - Italy. Its editorial board is composed of more than 150 members, including students, scholars, and professionals from all over the world. It is a double-blind peer reviewed law journal, run by University of Bologna, School of Law students, which follows The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.
The Trento Student Law Review is a student-run law review based in Trento, Italy. Established in 2017, it published its first issue, titled "Number Zero", in January 2018.
has published its Black Issue in 1970, criticizing legal aid. It resulted in reforms of accessible legal aid in the Netherlands.
In Finland, Helsinki Law Review
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Sweden's first law review is Juridisk Publikation. The first number of Juridisk Publikation was published in April 2009. It originated as a review by students from Stockholm University. It is now delivered to Swedish law students from all universities, as well as to most legal libraries in the country. Juridisk Publikation is edited by top students from the law schools in Lund, Stockholm Uppsala, Gothenborg and Umeå. The publication is anonymously peer reviewed by a board of leading Swedish legal practitioners and academics.
In Norway, the first student edited law review Jussens Venner was founded in 1952 by students Carsten Smith and Torkel Opsahl (both of whom later became distinguished academics). Occasionally it features peer-reviewed articles, but its editors are composed of one student from the Faculty of Law at the University of Oslo and one student from the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen. Its articles are mainly related to the curriculum at these universities.
The China Law Journal is an attempt to create a legal publication, that is produced from all groups related to law, including lawyers, academics, students, members of the judiciary, procurators and anyone else in related fields with an interest in China.
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.Wes Henricksen, Making Law Review: The Expert's Guide to Mastering the Write-On Competition (2008). Most Canadian law reviews, however, do not take grades into considerations and cannot be submitted with the application. 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.
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 edit and case citation 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 format, depending on the publication's preference. On some law reviews, students may be expected to write a note or comment of publishable quality (although it need not actually be published), although other law reviews often pull from a broader pool for submissions.
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.
By the 1870s, these early commercial legal periodicals established the format for a more "modern style of legal writing" and led to today's student-edited law reviews. The first student-edited law periodical in the US was the Albany Law School Journal, founded in 1875. This journal, described as something like a "legal newspaper", folded after just one year. Its spiritual successor, the current Albany Law Review was later published in 1936.
The Columbia Jurist was created by students in 1885 but ceased publication in 1887. Despite its short lifespan, the Jurist is credited with inspiring creation of the Harvard Law Review, first published in 1887 . The current Columbia Law Review, was founded in 1901.
The National Law Review also started during the 1880's, but was not student or academically produced, but published by Pennsylvania reporter and legal book publisher Kay & Brother and included editorially reviewed contributions by practicing attorneys focusing on the interpreting court decisions on a nationwide basis versus regionally and was not an academic law review. It continues today as on-line only daily legal news service with analysis contributed by lawyers and the publication's journalists.
The success of the Harvard Law Review provided a model that was followed by later journals: faculty-written articles solicited and published by student editors. Yale Law Journal, first published in 1891, used this format to great success. Other contemporary journals were launched by faculty with varying degrees of student input including Dickinson Law Review in 1897.
The West Virginia Bar, a publication by the state Bar association started in 1894. In 1917, editorship was taken over by the West Virginia College of Law and became the West Virginia Law Review in 1949.
The first law review originating outside the Northeast was the Michigan Law Review, beginning in 1902. The Northwestern University Law Review—formerly the Illinois Law Review—followed shortly thereafter in 1906. Both Michigan and Northwestern were launched by faculty and only later turned over to student editors. Following these publications, there was a lull in new journals broken in 1908 by publication of the Maine Law Review which unfortunately ceased publication when the school closed in 1920.
The California Law Review, beginning in 1912, was the nation's first law review published west of Illinois. The Georgetown Law Journal was launched that same year.
Additional US law reviews
Some law reviews also consider race, gender, and other demographic characteristics of all or a portion of prospective editors in order to increase the diversity of the journal’s membership. In 2018, a self-styled group of "faculty, alumni, and students opposed to racial preferences" sued New York University Law Review and Harvard Law Review over this practice. Both suits were dismissed in 2019 for lack of standing.
In 2019, the top 16 law schools in the United States all reported female editor-in-chief of their law reviews. For the first time in history, women led all of the law journals of the most prestigious U.S. law schools.
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