LAW REVIEWS DON’T SUCK! (Excerpt from an article, in draft)

By Lawprofblawg[FN*]

I. INTRODUCTION

The [FN1] notion [FN2] that [FN3] law reviews are awful means of communicating information is just ludicrous.  A recent New York Times article seems to enhance this wrong perception.[FN4].  In this law review article, I explain the reason why law reviews are exceptional at communicating amazing ideas by people seeking tenure and glory, why courts and lawyers are wrong to ignore them, and why the reader (usually a student) should be proud of his or her hard work and therefore publish this 50 page, 600 footnote tome in the Harvard Law Review. . . .

This article will start in earnest with Section II, which describes the history of law reviews.[FN133]  While it is true, this article concludes, that mostly only professors and their friends read the articles contained therein, and law journal editors looking for citations, that law reviews shall rise again, based upon my psychological profiling of Justice Scalia.  Section III builds upon the recitation of stuff you already.  It then suggests that law reviews serve an essential function by providing untenured people with tenure materials and external validation, which is well worth the destruction to the environment caused by the number of trees killed in reprints mailed but never read.  Section IV describes how the Supreme Court uses law review articles for specific purposes, such as stabilizing the tables in their cafeteria and when they are completely at a loss for ideas.  Section V describes how I will somehow come up with something interesting about this process after rehashing what others have done in the previous four sections.  Section VI offers concluding remarks which will look exactly like my introduction and topic sentences from Section V.[FN300] . . . .

[FN*] Venerable Professor of Psycholinguistics and Law, University of Law.  Ph.D., Oxford, J.D. Harvard.  LLM, Yale, SJD Stanford, and M.Phil, Oxford.  The author would like to thank the Justices of Supreme Court for any comments they may have provided, as well as several prominent academics who have over 3,000 Westlaw hits.

[FN1]  Oxford English Dictionary (1999).

[FN2]  Id.  Cf. American Heritage Dictionary (2001).  See also Urban Dictionary, available at http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=that.

[FN3] Id.

[FN4] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/us/law-scholarships-lackluster-reviews.html?hp&_r=1&

….

[FN133]  Gratuitous self-cite in a higher ranked journal.  Hint hint.

[FN300]  All of my own thoughts will be properly cited, referencing prior articles, to keep editors happy.  See Irony, Oxford English Dictionary, supra note 1.