This isn't a criticism of any of these authors but of a culture. Look at this contents page. The YLJ comes out in 8 volumes (!) a year, and this is a typical volume of 400+ pages. Look at the contents page - ThreadSky

spinninghugo.bsky.social • 86 days ago

This isn't a criticism of any of these authors but of a culture. Look at this contents page.

The YLJ comes out in 8 volumes (!) a year, and this is a typical volume of 400+ pages. Look at the contents page

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spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

A "note" that is 70 pages long. Articles the length of a novella.

Compare that with either journals in other related disciplines (eg Ethics) or law journals from other jurisdictions (eg l CLJ, MLR or SLR).

/2

spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

Part of the problem is having students edit the journals, and their not generally being peer reviewed, which is an American law school oddity.

But it is also cultural. To be "important" something has to be 100 pages long.

/3

spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

That means that anything valuable and novel that might in fact be being said is lost, as the reader is forced to skim hundreds of pages. And, of course, there is no guarantee that the good stuff is in the YLJ or any one of the dozens of other equivalent journals.

/4

spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

That kills the discourse. In the UK we suffer badly from stovepipe mentality, with everybody becoming ever more specialised and not reading anything outside of their direct interest, but in the US in twenty times worse. Because nobody has the time or energy to trawl through this stuff.

/ends

jimrobottom.bsky.social•86 days ago

I tried to read quite a lot US stuff for my PhD and half of it I either didn’t understand or couldn’t get through

spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

I am at the point now where if, after a certain amount of effort, I can't get something, the problem isn't mine.

giffordhead.co.uk•86 days ago

I remember being surprised reading that thread from a recent editor of one of these who suggested an article be submitted at something like 75 pages because they would add a further 25 during the editing process! One might have thought the purpose of editing was to cut it down to 15 or so...

nonstopdemocrat.bsky.social•86 days ago

Impose a page limit. Sorted?

giffordhead.co.uk•86 days ago

Do these articles ever get read again after publication? It comes across more as churn than anything else. Especially considering their subject matter. Do they really need another article about the 2nd Amendment and originalism for example?

spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

Honestly, I don't know. I would never pick up a US journal and just read several of the articles, as I do with the LQR each quarter.

pauldalyesq.bsky.social•86 days ago

Have the Americans become even thicker? When I was a PhD student I would occasionally pick up one of the US reviews on display in the atrium and leaf through an article of interest (though rarely the whole thing as one would with LQR). But it seems these days you would risk putting your back out….

giffordhead.co.uk•86 days ago

Having now been looking into them, I’m also amazed by the number. Yale seems to have 9 (!) despite having an intake of only 200 or so JD students a year. I know everything is bigger in America but that’s an unbelievable output!

xerrij13.bsky.social•86 days ago

I have used a review article once or twice in my career to bolster a particularly novel application or appeal point. But generally they’re used by other academics to… write more review articles.

It makes my head spin.

spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

Well, even in the best operating system, you'd expect quite a lot of the outputs to be essentially valueless, and most probably are. And many aren't addressed to you, but to courts of appeal, or to the writers of standard texts.

giffordhead.co.uk•86 days ago

I assume that one of the best ways of getting arguments in front of courts (and thence into the standard texts) is by having them in a form that can be cited by lawyers in support of their arguments? Burying it in a 100 page article makes this feel unlikely.

spinninghugo.bsky.social•86 days ago

One oddity of the way "impact" is assessed in the UK is that I don't think being cited by courts counts....

giffordhead.co.uk•86 days ago

That doesn’t surprise me!

xerrij13.bsky.social•86 days ago

Yes exactly. And I’m not an academic so I don’t claim to be the target audience at all.

But knowing many academics (and students on law review teams) there are two huge problems, one of which you’ve already touched on:

1. The total lack of any sort of peer review. As you say, imagine medicine, and

xerrij13.bsky.social•86 days ago

2. The fact that being on the law review is shoved down students’ throats as being “essential” to succeeding in their future career; they’re therefore made to work genuinely silly hours on top of their studies, unpaid, and often talked down to by (other student) editors with a sense of entitlement.

giffordhead.co.uk•86 days ago

It often seems to be the wrong way around to me. For years I assumed that a student Law Review Journal involved students writing the articles and professionals editing them. Not vice versa!

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