Is Peer-Review the Future?

My husband spends a great deal of time laughing whenever I have an article somewhere in pre-publication limbo.   As a radiologist, he just can't bend his mind around the notion that our work is selected and then edited by folks who are (essentially) our students.  I have also assumed that the advent of peer-reviewed law journals is a response to a system that seems pretty absurd.  This seems to fit with the desire to streamline scholarly output by creating rules that curb traditional academic incinations toward redundancy and excess verbiage.  These hopes went mainstream this spring when (as you all probably know) HLR imposed new page limits (although 25,000 words is not exactly a "short" article). 

In theory, this all seems fine, but I am curious about real-world experiences.  I'm just finishing up my first peer-reviewed article.  On the plus side, I received terrific and  extremely detailed feedback from two reviewers intimately familiar with the topic.   In fact, I was so impressed, that I am terribly interested in joining an editorial board myself - for the opportunity to learn from a broader cross-section of peers and use some of my accumulated knowledge to assist colleagues at other schools.   But I recognize that moving to more peer-reviewed publications means less output because production is much more time consuming (for everyone involved).  Although that in itself may be another advantage.  If anyone is working on a peer-reviewed article (either as an author, reviewer, or editor), I'd be interested in your thoughts.