Law Reviews

Coming Attractions: Internecine Warfare at the Harvard Law Review

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Harvard Law Review Andrew Crespo Above the Law blog.jpgWe’re going to be doing a series of posts about the world’s premier journal of legal scholarship: the Harvard Law Review. We’ve learned that there are some unhappy campers over at Gannett House (at right), who are less than thrilled with the Review’s new leadership.
Here’s a preview of what’s on the way. From a tipster:

As you might remember, Andrew Crespo was recently elected president of the Harvard Law Review. Since then, he has taken a decidedly fascist approach to leadership and he is running the journal into the ground with a cabal of radical idealogues, making the outgoing editors nervous about the future reputation of the journal.

Some have taken to calling him “Crespolini,” after [Benito Mussolini]. In short, there is a crisis of confidence at Gannett.

As noted in some of the news coverage of his selection, Crespo is the first Latino to serve as HLR president. Fortunately, Mussolini was Italian.
More to come in subsequent posts (including internal HLR emails). If you’re at the Harvard Law Review and have information to share, whether pro- or anti-Crespo, please email us. Thanks.
Crespo Elected First Latino President of Harvard Law Review [Harvard Law Record]
First Hispanic To Lead Harvard Law Review [Harvard Crimson]
Harvard Law Review elects Crespo as new president [Harvard Law School (press release)]

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A Report on the First Annual Bluebook Invitational

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This past weekend witnessed an historic event: the first annual BLUEBOOK INVITATIONAL!!!
And we were on hand for the competition. On Saturday, May 12, the four august publications that publish the Bluebook — the Columbia Law Review, the Harvard Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal — vied for supremacy.
When we first learned about the “Bluebook Invitational,” we could barely contain our excitement. We imagined a contest to determine which law review’s editors were most proficient in the rules of legal citation. It would be like the law review version of the crossword puzzle contests featured in the movie Wordplay. Editors would be given sample pages of incorrectly Bluebooked prose. They would then have to edit them, under time pressure, before being scored on both the speed and accuracy of their Bluebooking.
Sadly, as we later learned, the “Bluebook Invitational” has nothing to do with actual Bluebooking:
Bluebook 5a.JPG
WTF? Why would we want to watch a bunch of law review gunner-types toss a pigskin around?
As it turned out, though, we had a fun time. And some of the players were actually very good.
A report on the proceedings, plus pictures, after the jump.

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A Sign of the Apocalypse?

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Ring the alarm! This just in, from the Harvard Crimson:

Harvard Law Review Above the Law blog.gifThe Harvard Law Review is cited less and less in decisions by federal courts, in keeping with a trend across several major law reviews, according to a study published last month by staff at the Cardozo Law Review of Yeshiva University.

The researchers found that the Harvard journal was cited 4,410 times in federal courts during the 1970s, but only 1,956 in the 1990s, and 937 so far in this decade—despite an increase in the number of cases brought to courts.

It’s ’cause judges are citing Wikipedia so much these days — plus all those darn blogs….
Fewer Cases Cite Harvard Law Review [Harvard Crimson via How Appealing]
When Is It Appropriate to Cite to Wikipedia? [Concurring Opinions]
Courts Citing Blogs [Volokh Conspiracy]

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Breakfast Food Controversy Erupts at BU Law

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In response to our coverage of “Sectiongate” up at Harvard Law School, one commenter wrote:

To see how dumb this topic is, imagine replacing “Harvard” with “Boston University.”

Yes, that would be dumb. Because Boston University School of Law has its own stupid pseudo-scandal, and it’s not Sectiongate. Say hello to… Bagelgate!!!

bagels New York bagels cream cheese Above the Law blog.jpgDate: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 17:24:00 -0500
From: BU Law Student Affairs
Reply-To: BU Law Student Affairs
Subject: Journal issue
To: [1L, 2L and 3L classes at BU]

Dear Students,

We wanted to ask your help with an issue that may seem minor but is causing understandable frustration. Our law journals often collect dues from the members for certain things such as refreshments for the morning since they spend so much time in the journal offices putting out the journal books.

Unfortunately, one of the journals which has an office in room 545 has noticed that often students who are not journal members find their way into the office and take refreshments that the journal members have purchased with their journal dues for journal members. This may reflect a misunderstanding on non-journal members’ parts, in that students might think the school is paying for the refreshments.

However, that is not the case — they are paid for out of journal member dues and are only for the journal members. We greatly appreciate your assistance in refraining from going into the journal offices and partaking of refreshments that are for the journal members and paid for by their dues.

Many thanks!

In other words: Thank You For Not Stealing.
Before some of you start railing against the caste system that unfairly separates law review members from the rest of the class — showering the former with lucrative law firm jobs, coveted clerkships, and free breakfast food, while shafting the latter — we should note that the bagel-raid victim was not THE law journal, i.e., the Boston University Law Review. We’re told it was the Journal of Science and Technology Law.
So there is no broader social lesson to be drawn here — other than that law students like free bagels.
(We realize that Bagelgate, like Sectiongate, is “dumb” — and that’s why we like it. We have a weakness for the ridiculous, the petty, and the inane — especially when law schools are involved. See, e.g., the mystery smell in the NYU Law library, and the sex-in-the-stacks scandal at Washington University Law School.)

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Beyond the Bluebook: The Future of Writing About the Law

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Writing About the Law New York Law School NYLS Above the Law.jpgOops, we forgot to post our write-up of the final panel of Friday’s conference at New York Law School.
Afternoon Panel (2:15-3:30): Beyond the Bluebook: The Future of Writing About the Law
“In a world increasingly dominated by blogs and online publications, does traditional legal scholarship have a future? Will legal scholars abandon the traditional law review to write for a popular audience, and if so, why? What will this brave new world look like?”
Panelists and Moderator:
* Bernard Hibbitts, Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Editor in Chief of Jurist.
* Rosa Brooks, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and op-ed columnist, Los Angeles Times.
* Jack Balkin, Professor, Yale Law School and Founder and Director of the Information Society Project.
* Lawrence B. Solum, Professor, University of Illinois College of Law and author of Legal Theory Blog.
* Rodger Citron (Moderator), Assistant Professor of Law, Touro Law Center.
For those of you who are interested — which, we realize, is probably a small, wonky group — a brief discussion appears after the jump.

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Just Cite It! The Traditional Law Review Structure

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Writing About the Law New York Law School NYLS Above the Law.jpgRight now we’re in the audience for this panel at the NYLS conference on writing about the law:
Morning Panel #1 (9:30-10:45): Just Cite It! The Traditional Law Review Structure
Law reviews have been attacked as irrelevant and their student editors criticized as incompetent, yet legal scholars still need to publish in law reviews to get and keep their jobs. What role does the traditional law review play, what role should it play, and should it be continued?
Panelists and Moderator:
* James Lindgren, Professor, Northwestern University School of Law and Cofounder of the section on Scholarship of the Association of American Law Schools.
* Randy E. Barnett, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center and senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute.
* Ann Althouse, Professor, University of Wisconsin School of Law and author and blogger.
* Paul Caron, Professor, University of Cincinnati School of Law and Publisher and Editor of TaxProf Blog
* Cameron Stracher (Moderator), Codirector, Program in Law & Journalism and Publisher, New York Law School Law Review.
Commentary after the jump.

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Hey, What Are You Doing Here?

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pumpkin pie.jpgWhy are you in front of your computer? To quote our big brother:

The rest of America is either sleeping off their Thanksgiving hangovers or pushing their way into a mall to grab those holiday shopping discounts. But you’re rubbing the sleep out of your eyes while staring at a glowing screen. Well, you’re not alone. We’re here with you too today. And we’ll do our best to keep you entertained, and maybe even informed.

Yup, that’s right. For all of your poor saps who are at your computers working away, we’re here to keep you company (even if other usually industrious bloggers, like Howard Bashman and Peter Lattman, have cruelly abandoned you).
In the comments to this post, feel free to start up an open thread explaining why you’re in the office today (and bitching about it). Also, here are a few random Thanksgiving posts to be grateful for:
– What Tax Profs Are Thankful For [TaxProf Blog]
– Looking back on the Thanksgiving squirrel [Althouse]
– Thanksgiving, Thursday(s), and… Gettysburg? [PrawfsBlawg]
– Thanksgiving for Law Reviews? [PrawfsBlawg]
(Feel free to email us with more Thanksgiving-related links, and we’ll add them to this list when we update it later today.)

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.20.06

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* For you law review nerds out there, some direction as to the citation of new species of sources. But *sigh* you probably already know all of this. [Slaw.ca]
* Law students bring logic and order to child-bearing… It’s a shame that we have to forego all that spontaneity and excitement of unplanned pregnancies. (Like what 2L Tamina must have felt when she had her first of two kids in her late teens.) [Law.com]
* An Ohio woman litters by tossing bags of McDonald’s out her window, then invokes the Fast Food Nation defense — to no avail. [Tribune Chronicle]
* An Indian thief seizes the day — what’s money if you can’t spend it? [Reuters]

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