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47 Stan. L. Rev. 1147 (1994-1995)
Some Ways to Think about Law Reviews

handle is hein.journals/stflr47 and id is 1173 raw text is: Some Ways To Think About Law Reviews Robert Weisberg* I. INTRODUCTION Like most members of law faculties, I once worked as a student editor of a law review. And like many of that number, I have developed a somewhat avuncular attitude towards law reviews; I mean avuncular to suggest a mix- ture of affection, mild interest, occasional disapproval, and I concede, a bit of pretentious condescension. Especially because I teach at the same school where I was a law student, newly-elected student editors have often come to me for advice about editorial policies, new membership selection criteria, and other law review minutiae. I often have dodged their questions by invoking the virtu- ally sacred principle of law review editorial independence as a reason why I really should not interfere. When the editors then note that I have just uttered a non sequitur, I agree to make a few suggestions about loosening up the criteria for student notes, curtailing the inflation of currency in editors' titles, and not squandering all their energy in devising utopian membership rules that will (a) fail to satisfy everyone and (b) in any event get reinvented the next year. My advice is rarely taken, but to be consistent in my avuncular attitude, and appre- ciating that law reviews will be law reviews, I am happy to repeat the advice each new year. Our attitude, or pose, causes us academics to look at law reviews quite uncritically, and so I welcome the opportunity to think about the world of the law review with a bit more of the academic perspective that we urge our students to bring to law itself. In this essay, I offer a few tentative outsider perspectives on law reviews; I then note some of the more eccentric and persis- tent features of modem law reviews; and I close with some sociological speculations. II. AN INTERDISCIPLINARY (IF WHIMSiCAL) LOOK AT LAW REVIEWS In this section I propose some admittedly strained ways of thinking about law reviews. But the discomfort and distance of these perspectives should al- low the critical distance that members of legal academia might otherwise lack. A. A Marxist Inquiry A critic like Terry Eagleton might invoke the following, fairly generic, Marxist analysis: * Professor of Law, Stanford University. 1147

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