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Full-Text Articles in Legal Writing and Research

Acknowledgements As A Window Into Legal Academia, Jonathan Tietz, W. Nicholson Price Ii Mar 2021

Acknowledgements As A Window Into Legal Academia, Jonathan Tietz, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

Legal scholarship in the United States is an oddity—an institution built on student editorship, a lack of peer review, and a dramatically high proportion of solo authorship. It is often argued that this makes legal scholarship fundamentally different from scholarship in other fields, which is largely peer-reviewed by academics. We use acknowledgments in biographical footnotes from law review articles to probe the nature of legal knowledge co-production and de facto peer review in the legal literature. Using a survey and a textual analysis of about thirty thousand law review articles from 2008 to 2017, we examined the nature of knowledge …


Dumping: On Law Reviews, James Boyle Jan 2021

Dumping: On Law Reviews, James Boyle

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


May It Please The Court: A Longitudinal Study Of Judicial Citation To Academic Legal Periodicals, Brian T. Detweiler Oct 2020

May It Please The Court: A Longitudinal Study Of Judicial Citation To Academic Legal Periodicals, Brian T. Detweiler

Law Librarian Journal Articles

Part I of this article examines the proportion of reported opinions from U.S. federal and state courts between 1945 and 2018 that cite at least one academic legal periodical, while Part II applies that data beginning in 1970 to compare the proportion of opinions that cite to the flagship journals of 17 law schools selected and hierarchically categorized based on their U.S. News & World Reports rankings. Representing the most elite schools are Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal, the two longest running student-edited journals at arguably the two most prestigious law schools in the United States, followed by …


Editors' Note, Michigan Law Review May 2020

Editors' Note, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A reflection on the origins of the Michigan Law Review book review issue.


How Many Copies Are Enough Revisited: Open Access Legal Scholarship In The Time Of Collection Budget Constraints, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2019

How Many Copies Are Enough Revisited: Open Access Legal Scholarship In The Time Of Collection Budget Constraints, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

This article discusses the results of a study into the open access availability of law reviews, followed by a discussion of why open access has such a high rate of adoption among law reviews, especially in comparison to the journal literature in other disciplines.


Why Write?, Erwin Chemerinsky Jun 2017

Why Write?, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

This wonderful collection of reviews of leading recent books about law provides the occasion to ask a basic question: why should law professors write? There are many things that law professors could do with the time they spend writing books and law review articles. More time and attention could be paid to students and to instructional materials. More professors could do pro bono legal work of all sorts. In fact, if law professors wrote much less, teaching loads could increase, faculties could decrease in size, and tuition could decrease substantially. The answer to the question "why write" is neither intuitive …


In Praise Of Law Books And Law Reviews (And Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), Cass R. Sunstein Apr 2016

In Praise Of Law Books And Law Reviews (And Jargon-Filled Academic Writing), Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

Many people, including many lawyers and judges, disparage law reviews and the books that sometimes result from them on the ground that they often deal with abstruse topics, of little interest to the bar, and are sometimes full of jargon, including excessively academic and impenetrable writing. Some of the objections are warranted, but at their best, law books and law reviews show a high level of rigor, discipline, and care; they have a kind of internal morality. What might seem to be jargon is often a product of specialization, similar to what is observed in other fields (such as economics, …


The Changing Market For Criminal Law Casebooks, Jens David Ohlin Apr 2016

The Changing Market For Criminal Law Casebooks, Jens David Ohlin

Michigan Law Review

Criminal law is a nasty business. The field takes as its point of departure the indignities that human beings visit upon each other—each one worse than the one before. A book or article about criminal law often reads like a parade of horribles, an indictment of humanity’s descent into moral weakness. For those who teach criminal law, everything else pales in comparison. Neither the business disputes of contract law nor the physical injuries described in a torts casebook can compare with the depravity of what we teach in criminal law. Criminal law professors are often addicted to their subject. Nothing …


A Compendium Of Clever And Amusing Law Review Writings -- An Idiosyncratic Bibliography Of Miscellany With In Kind Annotations Intended As A Humorous Diversion For The Gentle Reader, Thomas E. Baker Jan 2016

A Compendium Of Clever And Amusing Law Review Writings -- An Idiosyncratic Bibliography Of Miscellany With In Kind Annotations Intended As A Humorous Diversion For The Gentle Reader, Thomas E. Baker

Thomas E. Baker

The world of the American law review resembles Middle Earth for all its strange inhabitants, secret rituals, and foreboding folklore. The depth and breadth of law review literature defies facile characterization, but it can be stated without fear of contradiction that the truly clever or amusing law review article is the quintessential rara avis. Law review articles - and the people who write them and the people who read them - are serious to a fault. Indeed, whenever a judge, a lawyer, a law professor, or a law student writes something truly funny he or she runs the risk of …


Should Your Law Review Article Have An Abstract And Table Of Contents?: An Empirical Analysis, Christopher A. Cotropia Jan 2016

Should Your Law Review Article Have An Abstract And Table Of Contents?: An Empirical Analysis, Christopher A. Cotropia

Law Faculty Publications

A review of the relevant literature turned up no studies examining the influence of abstracts on citation to law review articles. Nor were studies found examining the influence of tables of contents. To chart this territory, we explore whether abstracts and tables of contents impact the scholarly influence of academic work in the field of legal studies by using a large sample of law review articles published in top 100 law reviews. Part I describes our methodology while Part II reports the results. Part III summarizes the results and discusses them in view of the title question: should your law …


Law School Institutional Repositories: A Survey, Kincaid C. Brown Jan 2016

Law School Institutional Repositories: A Survey, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of law libraries managing institutional repositories for their law schools. In 2011, there were some 30 law schools with such repositories; now, 80 of the top 100 law schools have their own or participate in a university-wide repository wherein the law school has an identifiable, school-specific collection or community. This article discusses a survey of the of the top 101 law schools, in hopes of facilitating an understanding of the breadth of material to be found in law school institutional repositories.


Student-Edited Law Reviews Should Continue To Flourish, Sudha Setty Jan 2016

Student-Edited Law Reviews Should Continue To Flourish, Sudha Setty

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, the Author opines that the institution of the student-edited law review could no doubt be improved upon in a number of ways, but the existence of the student-edited journal should be sustained, nurtured, and grown by law school administration and faculty. Helping student-edited law reviews improve and flourish should be part of the mission of teachers, scholars, and lawyers committed to providing a skills-based education, for an intellectual discourse, and a service to the legal community.


Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Sep 2015

Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Law Journals have been under heavy criticism for as long as we can remember. The criticisms come from all quarters, including judges, law professors, and even commentators at large. In an address at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference almost a decade ago, for example, Chief Justice Roberts complained about the “disconnect between the academy and the profession.” More pointedly, he continued, “[p]ick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was …


The History And Influence Of The Law Review Institution, Michael L. Closen, Robert J. Dzielak Jul 2015

The History And Influence Of The Law Review Institution, Michael L. Closen, Robert J. Dzielak

Akron Law Review

The "academic scholarship" to which Cardozo referred related principally to the articles appearing in law reviews of the law schools during that period in time. Almost immediately upon their establishment, the student-edited law reviews became a significant and lasting feature of legal education in the United States. Since the publication of the first student-edited law review in the 1870s, the law review institution has advanced to the stage where today, more than 400 such periodicals are published. Their history, though interesting in itself, provides many insights into the development of legal education generally.


Scholarly Incentives, Scholarship, Article Selection Bias, And Investment Strategies For Today's Law Schools, Dan Subotnik, Laura Ross May 2015

Scholarly Incentives, Scholarship, Article Selection Bias, And Investment Strategies For Today's Law Schools, Dan Subotnik, Laura Ross

Dan Subotnik

No abstract provided.


Justice And Law Journals, Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Adam B. Wolf Jan 2015

Justice And Law Journals, Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Adam B. Wolf

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

What is the role for a law journal in advancing justice? What is the role of a justice-minded practitioner in furthering legal scholarship? And what is the intersection—practically and normatively—for law journals, legal scholars, practitioners, and justice? This brief Article attempts to lay a foundation for answering these important, but oft-neglected, questions. In the following conversation, a frequent contributor to the Michigan Journal of Race & Law (MJRL) and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal posit some ideas on how legal scholarship engages with justice, and how race-conscious practitioners can interact with race-conscious legal scholars.


Habermas, The Public Sphere, And The Creation Of A Racial Counterpublic, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2015

Habermas, The Public Sphere, And The Creation Of A Racial Counterpublic, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis Fuentes-Rohwer

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas documented the historical emergence and fall of what he called the bourgeois public sphere, which he defined as “[a] sphere of private people come together as a public . . . to engage [public authorities] in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.” This was a space where individuals gathered to discuss with each other, and sometimes with public officials, matters of shared concern. The aim of these gatherings was not simply discourse; these gatherings …


Citations, Justifications, And The Troubled State Of Legal Scholarship: An Empirical Study, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Amy R. Mashburn Jan 2015

Citations, Justifications, And The Troubled State Of Legal Scholarship: An Empirical Study, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Amy R. Mashburn

UF Law Faculty Publications

Recent pedagogical, economic and technological changes require law schools to reevaluate their resource allocations. Although typically viewed in terms of curricular changes, it is important also to focus on the very significant investment in legal scholarship and its impact. Typically this has been determined by some version of citation counting with little regard for what it means to be cited. This Article discusses why this is a deeply flawed measure of impact. Much of that discussion is based on an empirical study the authors conducted. The investigation found that citation by other authors is highly influenced by the rank of …


Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer Jan 2015

Foreword: Reflections On Our Founding, Guy-Uriel Charles, Luis E. Fuentes-Rohwer

Faculty Scholarship

Law Journals have been under heavy criticism for as long as we can remember. The criticisms come from all quarters, including judges, law professors, and even commentators at large. In an address at the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference almost a decade ago, for example, Chief Justice Roberts complained about the “disconnect between the academy and the profession.” More pointedly, he continued, “[p]ick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th Century Bulgaria, or something, which I’m sure was …


Law Review Usage And Suggestions For Improvement: A Survey Of Attorneys, Professors, And Judges, Max Stier, Kelly M. Klaus, Dan L. Bagatell, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski Dec 2014

Law Review Usage And Suggestions For Improvement: A Survey Of Attorneys, Professors, And Judges, Max Stier, Kelly M. Klaus, Dan L. Bagatell, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

We do not need to worry about the consumers of law reviews because they really do not exist. A few professors who author texts must read some of the articles, but most volumes are purchased to decorate law school library shelves. The only purchasers of law reviews outside of academe are law firms which gladly pay for the volumes even though no one reads them.


Scholarly Incentives, Scholarship, Article Selection Bias, And Investment Strategies For Today's Law Schools, Dan Subotnik, Laura Ross Jan 2014

Scholarly Incentives, Scholarship, Article Selection Bias, And Investment Strategies For Today's Law Schools, Dan Subotnik, Laura Ross

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.


Editing Law Reviews: Some Practical Suggestions And A Moderately Revolutionary Proposal , James C. Raymond Jan 2013

Editing Law Reviews: Some Practical Suggestions And A Moderately Revolutionary Proposal , James C. Raymond

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos Jan 2013

Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos

Publications

Professor Jay Silver’s criticism of the reform proposals put forward in Brian Tamanaha’s book Failing Law Schools displays some characteristic weaknesses of American legal academic culture. These weaknesses include a tendency to make bold assertions about the value of legal scholarship and the effectiveness of law school pedagogy, while at the same time providing no support for these assertions beyond a willingness to repeat self-congratulatory platitudes about who professors are and what we do. The high costs for our students of the current scholarly expectations at American law schools are clear. What is not clear is whether those costs are …


Women Law Journals In The New Millennium: How Far Have They Evolved? And Are They Still Necessary?, Katherine L. Vaughns Oct 2012

Women Law Journals In The New Millennium: How Far Have They Evolved? And Are They Still Necessary?, Katherine L. Vaughns

Katherine L. Vaughns

No abstract provided.


Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson Oct 2012

Compelling Orthodoxy: Myth And Mystique In The Marketing Of Legal Education, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to demonstrate the negative effects of law schools’ preoccupations with enhancing their image and marketing strategy, especially as they are reflected in both scholarship and academic freedom.


The Most-Cited Law Review Articles Of All Time, Fred R. Shapiro, Michelle Pearse Jun 2012

The Most-Cited Law Review Articles Of All Time, Fred R. Shapiro, Michelle Pearse

Michigan Law Review

This Essay updates two well-known earlier studies (dated 1985 and 1996) by the first coauthor setting forth lists of the most-cited law review articles. New research tools from the HeinOnline and Web of Science databases now allow lists to be compiled that are more thorough and more accurate than anything previously possible. Tables printed here present the 100 most-cited legal articles of all time, the 100 most-cited articles of the last twenty years, and some additional rankings. Characteristics of the top-ranked publications, authors, and law schools are analyzed as are trends in schools of legal thought. Data from the all-time …


Legal Periodicals, Indexes, And Other Information Sources, Timothy L. Coggins Jan 2012

Legal Periodicals, Indexes, And Other Information Sources, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

This chapter identifies reference resources that might be useful to attorneys and other legal researchers. These resources are valuable for a variety of reasons, including: to locate a definition of a word or to select an alternative word; to locate names and addresses of experts and descriptions of their services; to locate background supporting information about an issue associated with the case such as statistics; to locate information about a judge such as his or her address or, more importantly, to determine something about the judge's temperament or courtroom style; and ID to locate names of court officials such as …


Open Access To Legal Scholarship: Dropping The Barriers To Discourse And Dialogue, Richard A. Danner Jan 2012

Open Access To Legal Scholarship: Dropping The Barriers To Discourse And Dialogue, Richard A. Danner

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the importance of free and open access to legal scholarship and commentary on the law. It argues that full understanding of authoritative legal texts requires access to informed commentary as well as to the texts of the law themselves, and that free and open access to legal commentary will facilitate cross-border dialogue and foster international discourse in law. The paper discusses the obligations of scholars and publishers of legal commentary to make their work as widely accessible as possible. Examples of institutional and disciplinary repositories for legal scholarship are presented, as are the possible impacts of …


The Durham Statement Two Years Later: Open Access In The Law School Journal Environment, Richard A. Danner, Kelly Leong, Wayne V. Miller Jan 2011

The Durham Statement Two Years Later: Open Access In The Law School Journal Environment, Richard A. Danner, Kelly Leong, Wayne V. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

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 …


Print Or Perish? Authors’ Attitudes Toward Electronic-Only Publication Of Law Journals, Richard A. Danner, Kiril Kolev, Marguerite Most Jan 2011

Print Or Perish? Authors’ Attitudes Toward Electronic-Only Publication Of Law Journals, Richard A. Danner, Kiril Kolev, Marguerite Most

Faculty Scholarship

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 …