Reflections on the Law Review Article Selection Process

There has been a lot of buzz on the blogosphere (see here, here, and here) about this article by Jason Nance and Dylan Steinberg in which they outline the results of a national survey they conducted on the law review article selection process.

Any law professor who has an interest in top placement of their articles in student law journals (i.e., almost all us) should take the time to read the article. The authors surveyed student editors at over 150 law reviews, asking over 50 questions about factors that influence their selection process. The factors included general themes of author prestige, topic, ease of editing, article format and length, and accompanying documents.

While most of the questions focused on the author of the piece, there were numerous questions focusing on how important the topic of the article was in the selection process. In their conclusions, they find that the single most important factor in the article selection process is under the broad category of “The Interest the Article Will Generate.” These conclusions were based on responses to the following questions, all of which had a very positive influence on article selection:

1. The article fills a gap in the literature.
2. The topic would interest the general legal public.
3. The article provides enough background explanation so that one not familiar with the particular field can understand relevant issues.
4. The topic has been discussed in the news in the past year.
5. The topic is one you consider to be controversial.

What does this empirical study suggest about international law scholarship? My sense is that such scholarship is particularly well positioned to do well in this category. International law continues to be in a process of formation, such that there are many gaps in the literature. There is a significant degree of general legal interest in, and mainstream media coverage on, matters relating to international relations generally and internatonal law specifically. And finally, the intramural fighting between and among international law scholars is a positive influence for student editors.

Another factor that is worth noting is that the survey revealed that if the topic interests the editor personally that will have a very strong positive influence in selection process. I’m sure many of us have had the experience of a particular senior editor letting us know they really liked our international law topic and that they were lobbying the other editors to accept the article.

The bottom line is that the empirical evidence supports the rather obvious point that the topic of an article is unusually important in the article selection process. I think as a general rule that bodes well for international law scholarship, particularly articles that are novel, timely, controversial, and of general interest.