I have blogged before about the length of law review articles, and my belief that law journals should try to accept and publish shorter works. I am therefore delighted to find out that some of the top law reviews in the country have agreed to a statement of principles discouraging particularly lengthy submissions. The agreement appears to be a response to the Harvard Law Review online survey in December that I blogged about here. Specifically, the ACS Blog reports that the main law reviews at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Texas, Penn, Virginia, and Yale have agreed to “rethink” the length of articles they agree to publish:
The vast majority of law review articles can effectively convey their arguments within the range of 40-70 law review pages, and any impression that law reviews only publish or strongly prefer lengthier articles should be dispelled. Ultimately, individual law reviews will have to decide for themselves how best to resolve these concerns. Please know, however, that editors across the country are cognizant of the troubling trend toward longer articles and are actively exploring how to address it.
It’s terrific that several of the top law reviews are being responsive to this problem. I hope other journals are paying attention and join in. Of course, it means that law professors who have spent the winter padding their articles with needless asides and unrelated background points to bulk them up to 100 pages or so are now going to have to edit their pieces down to a more readable length. But in the end this will result in better, more concise scholarship that is much easier to read and easier to understand.
(Hat tip: Paul Caron)
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