Law review

A law review (or law journal) is a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, normally published by an organization of students at a law school or through a bar association. The term is also used to describe the extracurricular activity at law schools of publishing the journal.

Law reviews should not be confused with non-scholarly publications such as the New York Law Journal or The American Lawyer, which are independent, professional newspapers and news-magazines that cover the daily practice of law (see legal periodical).

Overview

The primary function of a law review is to publish scholarship in the field of law. Law reviews publish lengthy, comprehensive treatments of subjects ("articles"), generally written by law professors, judges, or legal practitioners, as well as shorter pieces, commonly called "notes" and "comments," written by law student "members" of the law review.

Law review articles often express the thinking of specialists or experts with regard to problems with current law and 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 the courts in the United States. 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 article cited extensively in the Court's landmark decision in Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories (1980). However, in recent years, some have claimed that the traditional influence of law reviews is declining.