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75 Denv. U. L. Rev. 661 (1997-1998)
Law Reviews and Legal Scholarship: Some Comments

handle is hein.journals/denlr75 and id is 677 raw text is: Denver University Law Review's 75th Anniversary LAW REvIEwS AND LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP: SOME COMMENTS LAWRENCE M. FRIEDMAN Law reviews are the primary outlet for legal scholars, and the law review system is unique to legal education. People in other fields are astonished when they learn about it; they can hardly believe their ears. What, students decide which articles are worthy to be published? No peer review? And the students chop the work of their professors to bits? Amazing. And then they check every single footnote against the original source? Completely loco. Can this really be the way it is? Secretly, I share their astonishment; and I think the system is every bit as crazy, in some ways, as they think it is. There is, in fact, quite a literature of invective-professors and others railing against the law re- views.' But it would be rude to make much of a point of all this. After all, the reason I am writing these lines is because the University of Den- ver asked me to contribute a few pages in honor of their law review and its anniversary. A guest is not supposed to question the very existence of his host. Besides, Denver is one of the few-the very few-schools that takes law-and-society seriously, and its ethos and point of view no doubt have an impact on its law review as well. So, instead of carping and whining, I want to explore a few features of the law review system, and speculate about their consequences. After all, an institution so entrenched is bound to affect the very nature of legal scholarship-both in formal senses (for example, the length of articles); and in the substantive sense (what people write about). The medium may * Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor, Stanford Law School. J.D., 1951; M.LL., 1953, University of Chicago. 1. See, e.g., Kenneth Lasson, Scholarship Amok: Excesses in the Pursuit of Truth and Tenure, 103 HARv. L. REv. 926 (1990); James Lindgren, An Author's Manifesto, 61 U. CHI. L. REV. 527 (1994); James Lindgren, Reforming the American Law Review, 47 STAN. L. REV. 1123 (1995); Richard A. Posner, The Future of the Stident-Edited Law Review, 47 STAN. L. REV. 1131 (1995). The literature goes back quite far--at least as far as the well-known article by Fred Rodell, Goodbye to Law Reviews, 23 VA. L. REv. 38 (1937).

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