Law Commons^™

E. B. White Could Nod Too: Thoughts Occasioned By Reading “Death Of A Pig”, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

This is an essay on grammar and writing, with extended consideration of the value of Strunk & White as a guide. Although the essay defends Strunk & White against several of that volume’s strongest critics, it also illustrates that even the best writers—and E. B. White was terrific, as was Antonin Scalia—sometimes make mistakes. (At great, perhaps excessive, length, the essay dissects a problematic passage in White’s “Death of a Pig.”) We should learn from those mistakes, not accept them as inevitable.

The Universe Of Thinkable Thoughts Versus The Facts Of Empirical Research, Joseph A. Custer

Faculty Publications

Mr. Custer considers the use of "literary warrant" as it affects the usefulness of the West Digest System, and reports on the results of a survey he conducted with both legal practitioners and law faculty. He concludes that the West Digest System has some viability, but it will need to extend its literary warrant to remain a player in today's legal culture.

Researching Initiatives And Referendums In Arkansas, Joseph A. Custer

Faculty Publications

This bibliographic essay and guide to researching Arkansas initiatives and referendums is intended to assist anyone interested in this vital subject.

The Unwritten Article, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

A law review article without footnotes? Unthinkable. But what about an article with only footnotes - and footnotes to footnotes? Thinkable. And here it is.

Performance Scholarship And The Internal Revenue Code, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

If we can have performance art-and we can-why not performance scholarship? This commentary suggests an entirely new scholarly emphasis for legal academics. (OK, it's not entirely new, but it's new for those of us not teaching trial practice.)

Law Review Correspondence: Better Read Than Dead?, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

These essays were part of a mini-symposium, “Of Correspondence and Commentary,” published by the Connecticut Law Review. At the time, a number of prominent law reviews had begun to publish “correspondence,” shorter pieces generally commenting on work published in the reviews. Whatever they were called, however, these pieces looked an awful lot like articles, complete with footnotes, titles with colons, and other law-review-type stuff. The author used the creation of correspondence sections to ruminate on the nature of legal scholarship, as published in student-edited law reviews, and in particular to wonder whether authors were using correspondence sections as backdoor ways …

A Call For A New Buffalo Law Scholarship, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Those who haven't been paying attention to buffalo law should.

The Law Review Manuscript Glut: The Need For Guidelines, Erik M. Jensen

Faculty Publications

Legal academics generally publish in student-edited journals that have no sole-submission requirement, and it is common for authors to submit articles to dozens of journals at a time. As a result, law reviews are buried in manuscripts. Most manuscripts cannot even be looked at, much less evaluated, and there’s not much reason for evaluation anyway: a journal has little chance to publish any particular article. In short, the legal publication system is broken. (Indeed, given the ease and trivial cost of electronic submission - why not submit the article on artichoke law to Yale as well as So-So State? - …

Scholarship About Teaching, Jonathan L. Entin

Faculty Publications

This essay draws on that experience, focusing on approximately half a dozen particularly good articles that have appeared in the Journal during my editorial tenure. Most of these describe new ideas, offering detailed information for the curious reader who might want to emulate the author's approach or simply to learn what others in the legal academy are doing. Typically, however, these papers contain little or no meaningful assessment or evaluation. "Descriptive" is too often a pejorative term of dismissal. But good description is often an essential first step toward understanding. Because I believe that more rigorous evaluation could add to …

Empirical Legal Scholarship: Reestablishing A Dialogue Between The Academy And Profession, Craig Allen Nard

Faculty Publications

Should legal academics begin to engage in a greater degree of empirical scholarship, I believe that the gap between law schools and the profession will not only cease to distend, but actually will begin to contract. If what I assert is true, or even partially true, the question remains: Why is there such a paucity of empirical legal scholarship?

Part I of this article discusses the importance and value of the empirical method and empirical scholarship by briefly exploring the philosophy of Pragmatism and its influence on the law. Thereafter, part II explores why legal academics do not engage in …