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36 J. Legal Educ. 14 (1986)
Faculty Participation in the Student-Edited Law Review

handle is hein.journals/jled36 and id is 24 raw text is: Faculty Participation in the Student- Edited Law Review John G. Kester In the classic description, students without law degrees set the standards for publication in the scholarly journals of American law-one of the few reported cases of the inmates truly running the asylum. The baffled outsider is expected to marvel at how the legal profession, unlike any other, can rely so exclusively for scholarly discourse on journals edited by students. That anomaly always was a bit of a myth, however. And like a legal fiction that finally collapses under the strain of too many new circumstances, the institution of the student-edited law review is shaking because the realities that sustained it have altered. The unmentionable fact is that we editors who guarded the lofty independence of even the most-independent-of-all Harvard Law Review in the pre-Jacobin era of a generation ago kept a careful eye cocked on the Harvard faculty. Our professors, in turn, generously supplied counsel that we were clever enough to recognize (if not always admit) we needed. I doubt that the practice was vastly different at other schools. True, faculty members acted only by invitation. But the invitations were frequent, and were built into the editorial process-not just to contribute articles, but to comment on manuscripts received, to critique final drafts of student notes, and to suggest worthwhile topics for student writing. The faculty's advice was not always accepted. I recall particularly one major article that we commissioned and published, in spite of faculty disgruntlement (which we thought narrowly conceived) about both the subject and the reasoning; on both points I think we were right.2 The faculty warned us to abandon one major note as too ambitious; the outcome justified the determination of then Review president (now U.S. Circuit Judge) Richard Posner to go ahead.3 Differences of opinion were not uncommon. John G. Kester is a partner in Williams & Connolly. Washington, D.C. He served as President of the Harvard Law Review in 1962-1963. 1. Cf. Lon L. Fuller, Legal Fictions, 25 I1. L Rev. 363 (1930): The influence of the fiction extends to every department of the jurist's activities. Yet it cannot be said that this circumstance has ever caused the legal profession much embarrassment. 2. Charles A. Reich, Mr. Justice Black and the Living Constitution, 76 Harv. L. Rev, 673 (1963). 3. Note, Developments in the Law-Federal Limitations on State Taxation of Interstate Business, 75 Harv. L Rev. 953 (1962). 0 1986 by the Association of American Law Schools. Cite as 35 J. Legal Educ. 14 (1986).

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