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39 Conn. L. Rev. CONNtemplations 1 (2007)

handle is hein.journals/conntemp39 and id is 1 raw text is: CONNECTICUT LAW REVIEW VOLUME 39 CONNtemplations SPRING 2007 Essay The Law Reviews vs. the Courts: Two Thoughts From the Ivory Tower STEPHEN I. VLADECK 1. INTRODUCTION If you're reading this, you must not be a federal judge. According to a March 2007 article in the New York Times, legal scholarship has become too ethereal and abstract to be of any practical use to federal judges in their everyday disposition of cases.' In the words of Dennis G. Jacobs, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, I haven't opened up a law review in years.... No one speaks of them. No one relies on them.2 Paraphrasing 19th century Scottish writer Andrew Lang, Second Circuit Judge Robert Sack went even further, suggesting that, even when judges do cite law review articles today, they use them like drunks use lampposts, i.e., more for support than for illumination. This accusation is nothing new. For almost as long as legal scholarship has been around, there have been questions as to its relevance to everyday practitioners, including the bench and the bar.4 Perhaps the most famous . Associate Professor, University of Miami School of Law; Associate Professor (as of Fall 2007), American University Washington College of Law. My thanks to Matt Bodie, Duncan Hollis, and Paul Horwitz, for helpful conversations and camaraderie. Adam Liptak, When Rendering Decisions, Judges Are Finding Law Reviews Irrelevant, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 19, 2007, at A8, available at LEXIS, News Library, NYT File. 2 id. Id. 4 See, e.g., Fred Rodell, Goodbye to Law Reviews, 23 VA. L. REV. 38 (1936). As Rodell suggested, [t]here are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content. Id. at 38. It is also nothing new to suggest that this problem is particularly acute in the courts

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