For me the question is distinguishing between errors of language that
matter because they disguise some particular practice that is
inappropriate and ones that are perhaps, at worst, clumsy.  I still find
myself talking of the "National" body when I should obviously know better.
My dream remains to see our body become really international in the same
way, for example, the AAA (accounting) and JAR, AR and CAR are. We are
clearly a long way away, and sometimes we do have to be careful sometimes
about our practices if they do exclude.
 
I am not concerned about our discussions on the ALSBTALK and I do hope
that no one censors themselves because of senstitivity over whether
something is appropriate for one group or another. General calls are the
most efficient way of getting messages across. After that conversations
can be one on one if that is appropriate. Unlike Peter (and this is not a
criticism of his comments as he raised an important point) I found the tax
question interesting and could forward it to my tax colleagues in my dept.
I would suggest that Peter has raised a very important issue in relation
to the ALBJ. I recently heard that purely Canadian submissions are often
responded to by reviewers in terms of "what is the relevance for our
readers?" and the suggestion was made that discussions of Canadian law
should be comparative with US. I think we have to be very careful with
that. That requires the Canadian (or any other national) to learn not only
their own law but US (and likely be shot down on the latter). Of course my
response is why are any articles purely law and not business law which is,
by definition, cross-national, but since these articles still are
published I think we need a very explicit policy on this. I understand why
a reviewer might say this -- many of the articles are of little interest
to me either as they are completely irrelevant (what is that takings
clause anyway!!). However, I approach them like any of the accounting
seminars I have to go to in my school -- sometimes, and in the most
unexpected places, there is something there for me. This is an academic
exercise and we should be interested in ideas even if they do not
initially seem relevant.
 
Which is a very convoluted way of thanking Peter for raising the issue. It
gives us a chance to ask whether there are any substantive practices that
might exclude and could be corrected. I would be interested in people's
responses. I would also like to suggest that if the ALBJ reviewers are
reviewing as I was led to believe they are at times, then consideration be
given to an explicit policy that addresses this.I would really object to a
policy that says non-US law articles can only be included if comparative.
(taking into account that I would really like the articles not to be pure
law anyway -- but that is quite a different issue!).  There may well be
reason to ensure proper balance that does reflect the relatively small
Canadian (for example) membership, but I doubt there is any risk of our
submissions potentially swamping any issue.
 
And happy birthday to Peter - although I strongly object to the ALSBTALK
being used to rub salt into the wounds of "senior" colleagues! 40, old
indeed.  Harrrrumph!
 
Sally