Alternate titles:
I know Eugene disapproves of funny article titles, and I tend to agree. Nonetheless, sometimes you just come up with a title that someone, even if not yourself, can use.... So, if your title is, say, "An Analysis of Intermunicipal Competition, 1980-87," you might consider renaming it to "Seven Years in Tiebout." Similarly, if your title is "How the Consumer Product Safety Commission's Crusade Against Toy Balls Violates Consumer Freedom," you might consider renaming it to "The Road to Nerfdom." (See also "The Road to Smurfdom.")
I went from modern and trendy to dry and accurate in about the time it took to tell the Editor of the journal "good morning" and it felt great.
[fn1] See, e.g., Tracey Angelopoulos, Case Note, Pavlovich v. Superior Court: Spinning a World Wide Web for California Personal Jurisdiction, 39 San Diego L. Rev. 1019 (2002); Michele N. Breen, Comment, Personal Jurisdiction and the Internet: "Shoehorning" Cyberspace into International Shoe, 8 Seton Hall Const. L.J. 763 (1998); Brian E. Daughdrill, Comment, Personal Jurisdiction and the Internet: Waiting for the Other Shoe To Drop on First Amendment Concerns, 51 Mercer L. Rev. 919 (2000); Daniel V. Logue, Note, If the International Shoe Fits, Wear It: Applying Traditional Personal Jurisdiction Analysis to Cyberspace in Compuserve, Inc. v. Patterson, 42 Vill. L. Rev. 1213 (1997); Christopher W. Meyer, Note, World Wide Web Advertising: Personal Jurisdiction Around the Whole Wide World?, 54 Wash. &Lee L. Rev. 1269 (1997); Comment, Personal Jurisdiction and the Internet Quagmire: Amputating Judicially Created Long-Arms, 35 San Diego L. Rev. 619 (1998).
A word of advice: metaphors do not require quotation marks. As an editor with a legal publication, I see this all the time and have concluded that lawyers must feel that they must indicate (apologize?) when they write in a way that is imaginative or colorful -- as if they should always be literal.
I clerked for a judge willing to indulge a pun or two and helped with an opinion on a case involving a police officer who arrested and punched a court security officer after the CSO told the officer that the officer couldn't park in a space designated for a judge (another judge!). In the process of writing it up, we mused how 'disappointing' it was for us that there wasn't a general meele because we could then have entitled the factual section: The Space that Launched a Thousand Fists.
(2) "A RFRA Runs Through It," echoing the title of the movie "A River Runs Through It." People who are familiar with religious freedom law know that RFRA is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, commonly pronounced "riff-rah," not that different from "river." The article's thesis was that after the enactment of the federal RFRA, the entire U.S. Code should be read as if RFRA had amended each statute, and changed the policy balance struck by the drafters of each statute -- hence RFRA runs through the entire Code, so the joke is apt. Plus the article was published in a symposium conducted by the Montana Law Review, and the movie was set in Montana.
Not so good, perhaps because the underlying subject doesn't seem to lend itself that well to jokes: "Creole and Unusual Punishment: A Tenth Anniversary Examination of Louisiana's Capital Rape Statute."
Can I modify the title? We were Upsclaing tobacco cells from flasks to Carboys and 70L bio-reactors?
Ugh! That's just painful...
Shooting's too good for them. They ought to be drawn and quoted.
"If I never have to see another paper on tolling that doesn't make a bad pun on Hemingway or John Donne in the title, I will die a happy man."
Give the title a try if you like. It didn't work for me with Biotechnology Progress. And I wasn't about to withdraw an accepted paper over the issue!