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23 Va. L. Rev. 38 (1936-1937)
Goodbye to Law Reviews

handle is hein.journals/valr23 and id is 70 raw text is: VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW GOODBYE TO LAW REVIEWS T IS doubtless of no concern to anyone that this is probably my last law review article. As a matter of fact, this makes one more article than I had originally planned to write. It was something in the nature of a New Year's resolution. Yet the request to do a piece about law reviews seemed a golden oppor- tunity to make my future absence from the Leading Articles, Authors lists a bit more pointed than would the business of merely sitting in a comer, sucking my thumb, and muttering Boo. Keeping well in line with two traditions-a course which law- yers will readily understand-I decided to break the resolution and not wait for opportunity's second knock. This, then, is by way of explaining why I do not care to contribute further to the qualitatively moribund while quantitatively mushroom-like literature of the law. There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content. That, I think, about covers the ground. And though it is in the law reviews that the most highly regarded legal literature-and I by no means except those fancy rationalizations of legal action called judicial opinions-is regularly embalmed, it is in the law reviews that a pennyworth of content is most frequently concealed beneath a pound of so-called style. The average law review writer is peculiarly able to say nothing with an air of great importance. When I Used to read law reviews, I used constantly to be re- minded of an elephant trying to swat a fly. Now the antediluvian or mock-heroic style in which most law review material is written has, as I am well aware, been panned before. That panning has had no effect, just as this panning will have no effect. Remember that it is by request that I am bleat- ing my private bleat about legal literature. To go into the question of style then, it seems to be a cardinal principle of law review writing and editing that nothing may be said forcefully and nothing may be said amusingly. This, I

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