MLR's Annual Book Review Issue

The Faculty Lounge has an interesting post up about the Michigan Law Review's annual book review issue, which this year is considerably smaller than recent years' issues have been.  One thing the post doesn't note that I think is worth pointing out is that this year's issue is almost entirely (there are a couple of exceptions) devoted to public law-oriented books.  

That's too bad!  I published in Michigan's books issue a couple of years ago and found it a wonderful experience.  I hope they'll beef up next year and in the years to come.  I've flogged this issue before, as has the Faculty Lounge, but I continue to think book reviews are among the most useful, and certainly the most economical (even in their lengthy, law review-style form, which is still far shorter and less bloated than the typical leading article) and readable and engaging parts of the modern law review.  I continue to hope more reviews can be encouraged to publish reviews and review essays, and for that reason I hope this year's slim book review issue is an aberration.  

I wonder a little whether the decline in book reviews in the law review world is in part a response to the Westlaw-ization of the law review, in which all articles are so many random searchable bits floating in a Boolean pond.  Law review editors who may well have spent little or no time looking at physical copies of law reviews may not think much about how to shape a law review issue as an issue, with an accompanying interest in having it be a good "book," with an appealingly diverse and readable mix of genres.  Maybe I'm a fossil, or I'm unduly influenced by my journalism background and my love of magazines, with their "front-of-the-book," feature, and "back-of-the-book" format; but I still like a good law review issue, one that has a mix of diversity, coherence, and elegance in formation and presentation.  Book reviews, along with longer articles, shorter essays, short comments, and so on, are a valuable part of that mix, aside from their own intrinsic merits.  Any thoughts on my theory?  

Incidentally, the Faculty Lounge post I link to above has a further link to a list of law reviews that have recently published review essays.