The Volokh Conspiracy - Thank You Notes:

Law professors routinely thank lots of people in their thank-you notes (generally the introductory footnote that also mentions the author's affiliation, e-mail address, and the like). I've often heard the argument that authors try to use these thank-you's to impress readers, and especially law review editors: Citing lots of Big Guns in the thank you note, the theory goes, allows the author to shine in the Big Guns' reflected glory, on the theory that if the author thanks Akhil Amar, Charles Fried, and so on, he must be at least a Medium-Sized Gun himself.

I've always been skeptical of that theory, which strikes me as unduly cynical. I have nothing against cynicism if it's justified, but here I don't see much of a justification. A thank-you note doesn't show that the thanked people read the article, or even that they know the author well. If you go up to Amar or Fried or nearly any other scholar at a conference and ask them a brief question related to your research interests, they're likely to answer it: It's the polite thing to do, plus most scholars are genuinely interested in answering listeners' questions, and flattered to be asked for advice. And if the answer is helpful, then the author could (and even should) thank the answerer for the help.

So the thank-you note reflects nothing other than that the author has gotten some small help from the person being thanked. Readers know that, and authors know that readers know that, so there is little reason to think that authors are including the thank-you's to impress readers.

But there are of course two other reasons for the long thank-you's: First, thanking someone who has helped you, even slightly, is the right thing to do; and even if it's not clear that the help was more than de minimis, we are usually (and sensibly) taught to err on the side of thanking too many people than thanking too little.

Second, if you don't thank someone, you risk their being annoyed by the absence of thanks; and even if you think they didn't help you much, they may well remember the matter differently. Most people, especially the Big Guns, aren't going to care about whether they're thanked (except when they've contributed a great deal), and many aren't even going to remember that they talked to the author about the subject. But if there's even a small chance that failing to thank people will annoy them, it's again safer to err on the side of overthanking rather than underthanking.

So no need for cynicism here, I think: Though article authors will do lots of things to impress readers and law review editors, thanking others is so unlikely to be impressive that I doubt that it's being done (even partly) to impress. Good manners and fear are quite adequate to explain the presence of the practice.

	[Eugene Volokh, April 2, 2007 at 2:45pm] Trackbacks Thank You Notes: Law professors routinely thank lots of people in their thank-you notes (generally the introductory footnote that also mentions the author's affiliation, e-mail address, and the like). I've often heard the argument that authors try to use these thank-you's to impress readers, and especially law review editors: Citing lots of Big Guns in the thank you note, the theory goes, allows the author to shine in the Big Guns' reflected glory, on the theory that if the author thanks Akhil Amar, Charles Fried, and so on, he must be at least a Medium-Sized Gun himself. I've always been skeptical of that theory, which strikes me as unduly cynical. I have nothing against cynicism if it's justified, but here I don't see much of a justification. A thank-you note doesn't show that the thanked people read the article, or even that they know the author well. If you go up to Amar or Fried or nearly any other scholar at a conference and ask them a brief question related to your research interests, they're likely to answer it: It's the polite thing to do, plus most scholars are genuinely interested in answering listeners' questions, and flattered to be asked for advice. And if the answer is helpful, then the author could (and even should) thank the answerer for the help. So the thank-you note reflects nothing other than that the author has gotten some small help from the person being thanked. Readers know that, and authors know that readers know that, so there is little reason to think that authors are including the thank-you's to impress readers. But there are of course two other reasons for the long thank-you's: First, thanking someone who has helped you, even slightly, is the right thing to do; and even if it's not clear that the help was more than de minimis, we are usually (and sensibly) taught to err on the side of thanking too many people than thanking too little. Second, if you don't thank someone, you risk their being annoyed by the absence of thanks; and even if you think they didn't help you much, they may well remember the matter differently. Most people, especially the Big Guns, aren't going to care about whether they're thanked (except when they've contributed a great deal), and many aren't even going to remember that they talked to the author about the subject. But if there's even a small chance that failing to thank people will annoy them, it's again safer to err on the side of overthanking rather than underthanking. So no need for cynicism here, I think: Though article authors will do lots of things to impress readers and law review editors, thanking others is so unlikely to be impressive that I doubt that it's being done (even partly) to impress. Good manners and fear are quite adequate to explain the presence of the practice.