Law review

A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also provide a scholarly analysis of emerging legal concepts from various topics. The primary function of a law review is to publish scholarship in the field of law. Law reviews publish lengthy, comprehensive treatments of subjects (referred to as "articles"), that are generally written by law professors, and to a lesser extent judges, or legal practitioners. The shorter pieces, attached to the articles, commonly called "notes" and "comments", often are written by law student members of the law review. Law review articles often express the thinking of specialists or experts with regard to problems, in a legal setting, with potential solutions to those problems. Historically, law review articles have been influential in the development of the law; they have been frequently cited as persuasive authority by courts. Some law schools publish specialized reviews, dealing with a particular area of the law, such as civil rights and civil liberties, international law, environmental law, and human rights. Some specialized reviews focus on statutory, regulatory, and public policy issues.

Law reviews are generated in almost all law bodies/institutions worldwide. In the United States and Canada, most law journals are housed at individual law schools and are edited by students, not professional scholars, which is unique of law schools. North American law schools usually have flagship law reviews and several secondary journals dedicated to specific topics. For example, Harvard Law School's flagship journal is the Harvard Law Review, and it has 16 other secondary journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Membership and editorial positions on law journals, especially flagship law reviews, is competitive and traditionally confers honor and prestige. Selection for law review membership is usually based on a combination of students' grades, their performance on a short article-writing competition, as well as an examination on Bluebook legal citation rules.

In the US, law reviews are normally edited and published by an organization of students at a law school or through a bar association, in close collaboration with faculty members. Law reviews can provide insight and ideas that contribute to the bedrock of jurisprudence. For example, Justice Stanley Mosk of the Supreme Court of California admitted that he got the idea for market share liability from the Fordham Law Review comment cited extensively in the court's landmark decision in Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories (1980). A 2012 study found that the Supreme Court has increased its use of citing law journals and reviews over the last 61 years in majority, concurring or dissenting opinions, especially for important or difficult cases, despite claims by some judges to the contrary.

In addition to rankings that measure impact factor, a number of methods can be used to assess the notability of a law review. A professor at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication averages the annual rankings of: the Washington and Lee University Law School rankings, the average US News Peer Reputation score from the last 10 years, the average ranking of the School in US News of the last 10 years, and Google Scholar metrics for all Law reviews in the United States. There has been a weak correlation between law school ranking and law review citation metrics.

In the United States, law reviews are typically edited by students who are selected to join after successfully completing a "write on competition" at the end of their first year of law school. Grades and class standing are often considered during the application process. Law professor Erwin N. Griswold noted the concern some have about the unusual nature of a publication being run by students and celebrated the impact that it has had in law and legal education. In 1995, Richard Posner argued law reviews had a higher standard of fact-checking to faculty-run journals or published books, and described them as indispensable resources for law clerks, judges, practitioners and professors. He also argued that faculty-run journals are generally better at aspects including article selection and editing interdisciplinary papers.

In Canada, the fully student-run law reviews (without a Faculty editor-in-chief) include, in order of the frequency they are cited by the Supreme Court of Canada: the McGill Law Journal, the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, the Queen's Law Journal, the Alberta Law Review, University of British Columbia Law Review, the University of Ottawa Law Review, the Saskatchewan Law Review, and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review. The country also has several specialized publications run entirely by students.

Outside North America, student-run law reviews are the exception rather than the norm.^{[citation needed]} In Continental Europe law reviews are almost uniformly edited by academics.^{[citation needed]} However, a small number of student-edited law reviews have recently sprung into existence in Germany (Ad Legendum, Bucerius Law Journal, Freilaw Freiburg Law Students Journal, Goettingen Journal of International Law, Hanse Law Review, Heidelberg Law Review, Marburg Law Review), the Netherlands (Ars Aequi [nl]), Groningen Journal of International Law), Finland Helsinki Law Review and the Czech Republic (Common Law Review).^{[citation needed]}

In Belgium, the oldest and most prominent student-edited law review is Jura Falconis. It was founded by a group of students from the Law Faculty of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven who, in 1964, conceived the idea of producing their own law journal grafted on the famous American law reviews. Since then, Jura Falconis has grown into a very solid and most unusual value in the Belgian legal literature.^{[citation needed]}