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Full-Text Articles in Law

Bypassing Bias: How Law Reviews Circumvent Favoritism, Allen P. Mendenhall Dec 2012

Bypassing Bias: How Law Reviews Circumvent Favoritism, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Could peer-reviewed humanities journals benefit by having student editors, as is the practice for law reviews? Are student editors valuable because they are less likely than peer reviewers to be biased against certain contributors and viewpoints? Student editors of and contributors to law reviews may seem to be the notable exception, but legal scholarship is different from humanities scholarship in ways I address here, and law reviews suffer from biases similar to those endemic to peer-reviewed journals. Nevertheless, law review submission and editing probably have less systemic bias than peer-reviewed journals, but not because students edit them. Rather, law review …


From Natural Law To Natural Inferiority: The Construction Of Racist Jurisprudence In Early Virginia, Allen P. Mendenhall Dec 2012

From Natural Law To Natural Inferiority: The Construction Of Racist Jurisprudence In Early Virginia, Allen P. Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall

Science informed American jurisprudence during the age of the Revolution. Colonials used science and naturalism to navigate the wilderness, define themselves against the British, and forge a new national identity and constitutional order. American legal historians have long noted the influence of science upon the Founding generation, and historians of American slavery have casually noted the influence of science upon early American racism as organized and standardized in slave codes. This article seeks to synthesize the work of American legal historians and historians of American slavery by showing how natural law jurisprudence, anchored in scientific discourse and vocabulary, brought about …