I always try to find a way to disagree, especially if Tom Dunfee is
involved.

Do we need more traditional peer reviewed journals? We have plenty. If
one adds to that number all the student reviewed journals, we get a
staggeringly high number of peer reviewed journals. Law reviews play a
useful role for students. If faculty  want to publish elsewhere, the
option is now available. Let the students have their fun.

I think that an assumption Posner makes is that the traditional
doctrinal article should be banished from the presses, and that it is
better for all articles to be disciplined based, particularly if it is
a social science discipline. And I  think that his assumption is false
and overly scientistic. Doctrinal analysis is valuable. Reviewing it is
labor intensive.  Let the students do it.







On Oct 28, 2004, at 8:12 AM, Steven E. Abraham wrote:

> Can anyone really disagree?
>
> Dunfee, Thomas wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>>
>>
>> The following was in today's online edition of the Chronicle of
>> Higher Education.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> MAGAZINES & JOURNALS
>>
>>
>>
>> A glance at the November/December issue of "Legal Affairs":
>>
>> Fixing what's wrong with law reviews
>>
>>
>>
>> Law reviews use an editorial process that is "strange, even
>>
>> incomprehensible, to scholars in other fields," says Richard A.
>>
>> Posner, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago's law
>>
>> school and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh
>>
>> Circuit.
>>
>>
>>
>> The journals are generally edited by students, have large
>>
>> staffs, and do not use peer review. They are published
>>
>> bimonthly, or more frequently, and are "seemingly unconstrained
>>
>> in length," he writes.
>>
>>
>>
>> The system evolved when legal scholarship was more a
>>
>> professional activity than an academic one, he says, but now
>>
>> that the character of legal scholarship has changed, the
>>
>> weaknesses in the law-review system have become "both more
>>
>> conspicuous and more harmful."
>>
>>
>>
>> Legal scholars increasingly use insights from other disciplines
>>
>> in analyzing law, and student editors are typically not
>>
>> knowledgeable enough in those fields to provide editing
>>
>> suggestions of much quality. But the quantity of time and staff
>>
>> that the law reviews do possess allows them to "torment the
>>
>> author with stylistic revisions," he writes.
>>
>>
>>
>> The result, he says, is that "too many articles are too long,
>>
>> too dull, and too heavily annotated, and that many
>>
>> interdisciplinary articles are published that have no merit at
>>
>> all."
>>
>>
>>
>> Ideally, the solution would be for law schools to "take back"
>>
>> their journals and give faculty members the primary editorial
>>
>> duties, relegating students to tasks like checking citations.
>>
>> But the current system is so valuable for training law students,
>>
>> and for identifying particularly talented ones, that such a
>>
>> reform, he says, is "too much to hope for."
>>
>>
>>
>> The article, "Against the Law Reviews," is online at
>>
>> http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/November-December-2004/review_
>>
>> posner_novdec04.html
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>