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Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Big news in the world of expediting
Here. " We therefore commit, effective immediately, to give every author at least seven days to decide whether to accept any offer of publication." A few questions:
- Will it catch on more broadly?
- Will it change how offers are made in other ways? Will it change to whom offers are made?
- Does this matter to you?
HT: TaxProf Blog.
Posted by Matt Bodie on April 19, 2011 at 03:59 PM in Law Review Review | Permalink
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Comments
The letter states that "expedited review has inevitably favored established authors, popular topics, and broad claims at the expense of originality and merit." Likewise,the reviews purport to be concerned about "younger authors and authors who teach at lower-ranked institutions." I'll take them at their word. But, with the very notable exception of Stanford, they must not be too concerned because if they were they would be participating in experiments that actually try to solve that problem. I'm referring to something like this: http://www.legalpeerreview.org/index.php.
Posted by: LE | Apr 20, 2011 10:20:57 AM
Agree too. BU, Minnesota, and W&M are the only journals taking on any real risk here - good journals that are still at real risk of losing to other journals on expedited review. Whether they can keep it up remains to be seen. But good on them for at least trying. And kudos to all the authors of the joint letter for publicly acknowledging what ought already to be widely suspected - namely, that there is a double standard that works strongly to ensure that elite authors at elite institutions are the first to be read and the first to receive top offers. Our reliance on non-peer-reviewed journals already places law-review publishing at a greater distance from being meritocratic than in any other field. The time pressure created by the exploding offers only aggravates the situation. "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given."
This is not a cooperative equilibrium, and I suspect the noble troika will pay the price for not playing the game to hilt (and eventually buckle). Unless some top-5-school law professors out there are willing to reward them by making a point of publishing with them ... ? Nah. Now *that* is implausible.
Posted by: BW | Apr 19, 2011 11:23:52 PM
Agree with TJ. The small percentage of people who submit to law reviews that this new policy will affect makes it virtually meaningless.
Posted by: anon | Apr 19, 2011 6:26:34 PM
This is like Supreme Court justices committing not to give exploding offers to clerks. Exploding offers from Harvard and Yale are not what anyone is worried about.
Posted by: TJ | Apr 19, 2011 5:30:25 PM
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