The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to
publish a journal of legal scholarship. The Review comes out monthly from November
through June and has roughly 2,000 pages per volume. The organization is formally
independent of the Harvard Law School. Student editors make all editorial and
organizational decisions and, together with a professional business staff of three, carry
out day-to-day operations. A circulation of about 4,000 enables the Review to pay
all of its own expenses.
Aside from serving as an important academic forum for legal scholarship, the Review
has two other goals. First, the journal is designed to be an effective research tool for
practicing lawyers and students of the law. Second, it provides opportunities for Review
members to develop their own editing and writing skills. Accordingly, each issue contains
pieces by student editors as well as outside authors.
The Review publishes articles by professors, judges, and practitioners and
solicits reviews of important recent books from recognized experts. All articles—even
those by the most respected authorities—are subjected to a rigorous editorial process
designed to sharpen and strengthen substance and tone.
Most student writing takes the form of Notes, Recent Cases, Recent Legislation, and
Book Notes. Notes are approximately 18 pages and are usually written by third-year students.
Recent Cases and Recent Legislation are normally
six pages long and are written mainly by second-year students. Recent Cases are comments
on recent decisions by courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court, such as state supreme
courts, federal circuit courts, district courts, and foreign courts. Recent Legislation
look at new statutes or administrative rules at either the state or federal level. Book
Notes, also written by second-years, are six-page reviews of recently published books.
Student-written pieces also appear in the special November and February issues. The November
issue contains the Supreme Court Foreword, usually by a prominent constitutional scholar,
the faculty Case Comment, and about 25 Leading Cases—analyses by third-year students of the
most important decisions of the previous Supreme Court Term—and a compilation of
Court statistics. The February issue features the annual Developments in the Law project, an in-depth
treatment of an important area of the law prepared principally by second-year editors of the Review.
All student writing is unsigned. This policy reflects the fact that many members of the Review,
besides the author, make a contribution to each published
piece.
More about the Harvard Law Review: Erwin Griswold's Glimpses
of Its History (published in the Review's 1987 Centennial Album).
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