Expedite Request

The Harvard Law Review will not be reviewing manuscripts submitted after November 2nd, 2009. Any manuscripts submitted after that date will be queued. We will begin reviewing manuscripts again in February 2010.

Preference for Exclusivity

We strongly recommend that you submit your manuscript to us exclusively. As described in more detail below, our review process is lengthy; unlike many journals, we conduct faculty reviews and a vote of our entire staff before we accept pieces. As a result, we are often unable to make quick decisions when faced with exploding offers from other journals. Accordingly, if your preference is to publish your manuscript in the Review, please consider submitting the manuscript exclusively, at least 10 days before submitting it to other journals.

Authors who choose to give us an exclusive submission should indicate clearly in the cover letter and in our electronic submission system the date that they expect to send the manuscript to other journals. We apply the same standards of review to all submissions, but submitting exclusively makes it more likely that we will have time to put the manuscript through all of our stages.

Review Process

The Harvard Law Review carefully considers all manuscripts that it receives. Our selection process has many steps: each piece is reviewed anonymously, at least two editors review every submission, and many pieces go through substantially more stages of review, including an Articles Committee vote, a preemption check, faculty peer review, and a vote by the body of the Review. Although we make every effort to honor requests for expedited review, we do not omit any of our review stages in response to such requests. When requesting an expedited review, please understand that our selection process takes time.

There is no "best" time to submit a manuscript to the Review. We will never reject an article for lack of space; rather, we will hold it over for consideration for the next volume. While we encourage contributors to submit articles as soon as they are ready, we do not review articles at all between mid-May and mid-August, so there is no need to rush during this period.

We also review and periodically publish "Essays." A piece will be considered an essay if it is 25 law review pages or less in length, and its primary purpose is to advance an idea, summarize a development, or initiate or engage in discussion. We strongly encourage authors to submit essays for consideration.

We notify authors of our decisions by email.

We normally do not inform authors of the status of their manuscripts other than through email. As a matter of policy, we do not discuss the reasons for our publication decisions.

Thank you for your interest in the Harvard Law Review.