Insecure much?

How about waiting til tomorrow after 3, so as not to discourage the students currently working feverishly for the chance to serve Crespo's cabal?

Maybe that is the whole point 11:48? A grand conspiracy to reduce competition for the LR!

There are plenty of good reasons for not doing the writing competition, but scuttlebutt on a gossip website ain't one of them.

is one of the radical idealogues Goodling? i hear she is looking for a job. Jobs that require credentials beyond Regent Law Skool.

I've heard similar things about Crespo from friends at Harvard actually. Also that's he's incompetent.

Just to be clear, we're talking radical left-wing, not radical right-wing.

radical = left
reactionary = right

This is absurd. The problem is that the "outgoing editors" are all from the fluke year in which Lat's Federalist Society took over HLR, to the great dismay of the outgoing editors at *that* time. Those outgoing editors, not being crazy right-wing Fox-newsists, were above mounting bullshit smear campaigns in the blogosphere. The most "radical" HLR staff of recent memory is clearly the staff of outgoing editors who turned HLR scholarship on its head and turned the review into a politically-minded mouthpiece for the Federalist Society for the year. Only to these folks would having a moderate like Crespo take the helm represent something "radical" (or feigned "radical" for media purposes, anyway).

Lat, shame on you. Keep your blog tabloid-ish, as advertised. This isn't Fox News, so stop the liberal-bashing antics. This is so transparently a Federalist talking-point. Ick.

Whether from the left or right, I think unsubstantiated online grousings, without more, should be taken with a serious grain of salt. I sure hope that, as advertised, you have more than the fig leaf you've currently got...

I, for one, think that the graphic of Gannett House with a mushroom cloud is worthy of any good legal "tabloid." And a bunch of self-important law review editors engaged in a catfight? One of whom is already being billed as the Latin Obama? Bring it on!

Anonymous 1:53, you obviously know little about the law review. Most of the outgoing editors who have objected to Crespo's leadership are liberal, some very liberal. Also, the articles from the volume display no particular political valence (no surprise, given that of the nine articles editors, only one was a conservative/federalist society type, and several range from liberal to ultraliberal).

I don't understand how this isn't exactly what a legal tabloid is supposed to cover?

A HLR catfight is exactly what the doctor ordered while I try and set my lunch calendar for the next week.

I bet this Crespo guy is behind the plan to give all the illegal immigrants amnesty. He wants to build a huge beaner army that he can control to overthrow the government.

Crespo is so whitewashed that he should not count as Latino.

who cares? They're law students. Nothing important happens in the legal academy and what happens on law journals (including, especially, the Harvard Law Review) is even less important.

This is absurd--there is no crisis of confidence at Gannett, there are merely a few unhappy outgoing editors who preferred their policies to the current ones. Is that actually unusual? Most of the current editors have no problems at all with any of the HLR leaders.

Wow Lat--gossip is all well and good, but you seem to have provided a forum for some xoxo-style personal attacks in the comment section. If you're going to go down this route with a "series" please consider moderating the comments--these things can hurt people's careers.

This seems to be controversy over nothing. The position of Law Review President is important, but not all powerful. Even if Fidel Castro were the HLR President, there's little he could do to "run[] the journal into the ground." See supra. The articles are picked through a process of committee recommendation and then a full-body vote (the committee is elected, not appointed by the President). And even if all the articles in the volume were on the extreme left, that would just be one volume out of 120 and counting. The only thing the President can really do on his or her own is write memos to the authors suggesting ways to improve those articles. The author is completely free to reject those changes. So any outgoing editors who are worried about the future of the Law Review really ought to know better. BTW, I don't mean to imply that Andrew is doing a bad job. (In case its not obvious, I am one of the current editors.)

Without commenting on the current HLR administration, I'd like to correct the previous post. Technically, the president of the law review *is* "all powerful" and the other officers, the articles committee, etc. exercise power entirely at his pleasure. Moreover, even a president who doesn't interfere in the domains of other officers (as past presidents have on occasion) can influence the institutional health of the law review in a variety of ways. The final word on any number of decisions is committed to his discretion, from the enforcement of standards for student writing to the allocation of "discretionary" membership slots to the law review's interaction with other organizations on campus. The president is also the only person with the authority to override the decisions of other officers when they are not in the best interests of the review. Castro it ain't, but it's not unimportant.

I look at Andrew Crespo and he looks like a white guy to me.

"(In case its not obvious, I am one of the current editors.)"

Yes, "its" plain as day.

dude, did you actually correct a typo in someone's comment on a blog?

OMG 4:29, you just pwned a HARVARD LAW REVIEW EDITOR!!

4:29, are you an EE? They lose sleep over that stuff.

it's a sad day when your fellow editors post your private emails on a widely-read website. i hope that my journal is never reduced to attaching confidentiality clauses to the ends of our emails . . . my condolences to the folks at hlr.

This is degenerating quickly, although I suppose it began that way. This is one of the most democratic volumes ever. I’ve never heard “Crespolini” used. And I am surprised that there is an editor on staff with so little courage (and respect for the other editors) as to send complaints to a tabloid website rather than to raise them with the leadership and membership of the law review itself.

Yeah, Crespolini? Come on...this has got to be a prank or something. Please check your sources.

is andrew crespo a homosexual? he has a very effeminate voice.

asfdas

One former HLR ed's opinion: This is just another tempest in a teapot (albeit a teapot that people seem fascinated with). Every year or couple of years there's some subgroup convinced that the current leadership is driving the Review into the ground. There's enough institutional inertia and management turnover that this never actually happens. I'd bet a lot that this is more a lame kerfuffle than internecine warfare, and is soon forgotten.

Btw, great use of Bluebook form by anon current editor above ("See supra"), and even greater catch by the other anon on the incorrect "its". Truly a hilarious thread in a totally unintentional way.

"Welcome to a world where inexperienced editors make articles about the wrong topics worse."

-Richard A. Posner

For more fun, read his article: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/review_posner_novdec04.msp

What are these discretionary membership slots the HLR E-i-C gets to dole out?

I.K. Rico, quotation marks always go outside the period.

Andrew Crespo wants more Hispanics on the Law Review. He has discretionary spots to put on using whatever criteria he wants within the affirmative action policy.

I'm excited to see Lat's follow up on this, because the people over at Gannett are freaking out.

I believe there are 8 or 9 discretionary spots (out of about 40 total) that the president gets to hand out in any given year. He does so with the aid of a secret committee, but the final word (on this, as on all other things) is his.

Wow, these posts are shockingly full of racist sentiments. Whoever is focusing on Mr. Crespo's ethnicity and making connections between his backgroud and leadership ability needs to stop.

The law review president does not have the ability to single-handedly cast aside the collaborative efforts of the other editors.

On one level an HLR catfight is pretty entertaining and fun, but turning that into a forum for passive racism and personal attacks is inappropriate and unfair to Mr. Crespo and all the other hard working editors.

Agreed, 10:38 -- Lat, this is pretty embarassing material for you to be promoting. This site has often been irreverent, but this racism is a new and pretty disappointing development.

Bring back the good, clean fun.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Three observations:

1. Crespo, at least from my limited interactions with him, is a stand-up guy. It also seems he's the type to shy away from ideological bullying tactics. It's hard for me to envision him trying to force an ideology on the HLR. Then again, I only know him in the classroom and social organization context. I definitely could be wrong.

2. If there is an issue with his leadership style, let's see some proof. Until then, veiled racist commentary is unhelpful and rather disappointing. What is this, xoxo?

3. From what I understand (this knowledged gleaned from conversations with four current HLR editors), the discretionary spots are used to grant editor positions to folks who just miss the cut. If their competition or competition+grades score is just below the cut and they seem worthy, they get a discretionary spot. You can't even get an affirmative action spot if your score isn't up to snuff. Thus, AA editors come close enough to making it on their own to warrant the extra bump. No need to fear Crespo sifting through the 300+ completed submissions and doling out spots to the first ten kids who checked "Hispanic."

That said, let me get back to my case comment. And remember to check Hispanic.

The last post accurately describes (from what I understand) the typical past practice of HLR presidents. However, it's important to realize that there are absolutely no restrictions on the president's use of discretionary spots. So, while it might be customary to give these spots to students who "just miss the cut," how far to reach into the pool of didn't-quite-make-its (and how much weight to give to various factors) is up to the president.

nubs

Crespo, is white. The fact that people believe that his family coming from Puerto Rico, somehow makes him a minority is "absurd". How does the fact that his parents come from Puerto Rico differentiate him from someone who is darker and who family comes from southern Ital?.

As for diversity, what about diversity for Republicans and libertarians in the law review competition. I go to a top five school and there is not a single person who voted for Bush on our law review. In fact, given the weight given to the personal statement in our competition, there appears to be a disparate impact on people who use that opportunity to tout the ideological diversity that they would bring to the law review.

I fail to see why someone should be given an advantage based on where there parents are from because that supposedly adds diversity, while people who actually do bring diverse viewpoints are discriminated against.

While I can't speak to Harvard's law review policy, I can speak to my law school's and it is highly unfair. Not a single black or hispanic student graduated order of the coif this year (I looked at a friend's graduation booklet) yet there are a decent number of hispanics and blacks on the law review. At least a few of those who graduated order of the coif and were not on the law review had right-of-center politics and the law review would have benefited more from them being on it, than they did from accepting those under the false diversity rationale. In fact, about half of those on order of the coif at my law school are not on law review. While I would like to believe that those who graduated order of the coif and didn't make law review were excluded because of their poor scores in the writing competition and those with average grades who were given diversity preferences had outstanding scores in the writing competition, I cannot imagine that is true.