How Law Reviews Can Get It Right

Credit: Joe Shlabotnik, Creative Commons License.

We agree with the New York Times’ Adam Liptak[1] that most law reviews are increasingly irrelevant—filled with arcane articles that are, according to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, “[not] much help to the bar.” Most law reviews, but not all.

Founded in response to this perceived irrelevance, the N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change (RLSC) is dedicated to publishing scholarship that is not only relevant, but also applicable and implementable, to legal practitioners who are working to advance social justice in the world. So while we agree with Mr. Liptak’s sentiment, we regret that he painted with too broad a brush.

RLSC only accepts articles that meet a number of criteria that defy his generalizations. First, they must fit our “page-to-practice” model, which means that our editors believe the article will be useful to lawyers who are out in the field, particularly lawyers who are under-resourced and working in underserved communities. We actively avoid publishing obscure or irrelevant pieces that do little besides helping their authors get tenure.

Just this week, we were informed by Judge Toko Serita of Queens County Criminal Court that her proposals for a new framework to deal with the tragedy of human trafficking, published in our recent Issue 36, Volume 4,[2] are being taken up by New York Court of Appeals Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and the New York State Bar Association. Last spring, we held a symposium about marriage equality and published several articles that were released prior to oral argument in the California same-sex marriage Supreme Court cases, Perry v. Brown[3] and United States v. Windsor.[4] RLSC is, and has always been, focused on publishing relevant and timely legal writing.

The comments in Mr. Liptak’s piece also suggest that students are not qualified to make decisions about what is relevant to lawyers and what articles are best for publication. This, too, is an unfortunate generalization. Not only do many of our talented editors have years of experience working in the fields addressed in our scholarship—as inner-city teachers, paralegals, and social workers (not to mention professional writers and editors)—but through their clinical and summer work, they have a firsthand view of the problems good scholarship can address. Furthermore, RLSC continues to develop a network of expert practitioners in various fields who assist in selecting the most relevant articles for publication. In fact, we are currently developing a pilot program that will pair students with legal practitioners so that they can work together to co-author new articles. The idea behind this program is that it is the practitioners who have the relevant ideas and knowledge (even more so than professors) and the students who may have the time to do research. Pairing them will allow the most knowledgeable lawyers to get their ideas out to the world.

One celebrated fact that Mr. Liptak’s piece mentions is that “almost 40 percent of the cited articles in recent years were not by full-time law professors, but by students, practicing lawyers and others outside the more elite parts of the academic establishment.” In addition to publishing more student work than most journals (and publishing them as “articles” rather than “notes,” as most law reviews do), RLSC also stands for the proposition that the legal conversation should not be shaped exclusively by professors. Other voices deserve to be heard—diverse voices—and RLSC seeks them out to publish their work. If professors were to have sole control over legal academia, we would see far less diversity: only professors who can hire research assistants would ever be able to publish, and the selected articles would all be about other professors’ pet topics. It would only be the “elite parts” of the legal establishment that would have an opportunity to disseminate ideas. The purpose of RLSC is to go beyond that and change the legal narrative.

Unfortunately, Mr. Liptak is probably correct when he asserts that “law reviews are not really meant to be read.” We lament this fact—and not only on behalf of the law students who each spend hundreds of hours each year editing these pieces. Our journal, however, is meant to be read.[5] And, more importantly, used.

Nicholas Melvoin and Andrew Neidhardt
Editors-in-Chief, N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change

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[1] Adam Liptak, The Lackluster Reviews That Lawyers Love to Hate, N.Y. Times (Oct. 21, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/law-scholarships-lackluster-reviews.html.

[2] Hon. Toko Serita, In Our Own Backyards: The Need for a Coordinated Judicial Response to Human Trafficking, 36 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 635 (2013), available at http://socialchangenyu.com/2013/02/15/in-our-own-backyards-the-need-for-a-coordinated-judicial-response-to-human-trafficking.

[3] 133 S.Ct. 2652 (2013).

[4] 133 S.Ct. 2675 (2013).

[5] We hope you will continue to check out this website, which our Web Editors work hard to keep up-to-date and relevant.