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27 Ariz. L. Rev. 317 (1985)
Woe unto You, Law Reviews

handle is hein.journals/arz27 and id is 331 raw text is: WOE UNTO YOU, LAW REVIEWS!* John E. Nowak** I am about to be a disappointment to my audience. Though honored by the invitation to be a scholar-in-residence at such a fine educational institu- tion as the University of Arizona College of Law and to address the annual Law Review banquet, I find myself unable to deliver a speech or essay on the importance of law reviews to the development of a socially worthwhile sys- tem of law. Illadvisedly, if not mistakenly, the College and Review have invited a traitor into their midst. I am in fact one of the most dangerous breed of traitors to the inner republic of the bench and bar: a legal realist. Those persons who have any knowledge of the history of the legal real- ist movement earlier in this century will recognize the title of this essay as being stolen from the titles of two different works of the late Professor Fred Rodell who, though I never met him, is my hero in the saga of law professor service, or lack thereof, to society or (alternatively) to the legal profession. Other legal realists turned tail and ran when accused of injuring society through a nihilist attack on legal principles. Fred Rodell stood his ground. In the Introduction to the 1959 reprint edition of Rodell's Woe Unto You, Lawyers!, Jerome Frank wrote that, in retrospect, Fred might modify his harsh assessment of the American legal system. Fred replied, in a new pref- ace to that edition, that he would not modify his realist attack on The Law because he remained, in his words, an unreconstructed and uncon- verted legal realist. Fred showed how a cynical, value challenging attack on The Law must proceed and form the basis for honest arguments about the types of legal rules that should be adopted so as to promote (admittedly his own personal vision of) social good. He saw no useful role being served by law reviews and so, in terms of his own writing, he said Goodbye to Law Reviews, though more than once. Fred found only two things wrong with law reviews: their style and their content. I have no doubt that Fred was right in observing that: in the main, the straight-jacket of law review style has killed what might have been a lively literature. The particular forms of law review abuse of our Ian- * Copyright 1985 by John E. Nowak. * Professor of Law, University of Illinois. This Essay was meant to be the text for my talk to the ARIZONA LAW REVIEW banquet on March 30, 1985. Luckily for my audience, I covered only a part of this Essay in that talk.

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