Green Bag Call for Papers: Scalia and Garner’s “Reading Law”

The Green Bag invites submissions for our third micro-symposium, to be published in the Green Bag and the Journal of Law.

Theme: Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts (2012), by Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner, was the subject of a notable review by Richard Posner: The Incoherence of Antonin Scalia, New Republic, Aug. 24, 2012. Since then, much commentary on Reading Law has focused on the clash of celebrity lawyers, rather than the content of the book, at the expense of substantive critiques of the sorts that usually appear in serious reviews of a new work. Critiques not only help consumers make choices about what to read, and what to rely on, but also help authors produce better second editions. And we do not doubt that Scalia and Garner will put out Reading Law 2d someday. So, we invite you to pick nits, and motes and beams, in Reading Law. Tell us what is and isn’t worthwhile in it, and tell Scalia and Garner how to do better next time. As part of this symposium, we will be printing the “Hirsch Report” – commissioned by Garner in response to the Posner review – in the Journal of Law, so commentary on Hirsch’s work is also welcome.

Invited topics: Any theoretical, empirical, or practical commentary that will help readers better understand the book – its correctness or incorrectness, the good or bad uses to which it might be put, or anything else useful or interesting. Please do not waste your time or ours on tiresome anti-Scalia/Garner or anti-Posner ax-grinding. Scalia and Garner will have the last word, if they want it.

Length limit: 1,000 words, including title, text, footnotes, and everything else.

Deadline: Finished works must be received at [email protected] by September 1, 2014. No extensions will be granted and no post-deadline tinkering will be permitted.

Selection criteria: We will select works for publication based on how original, interesting, well-researched, well-written, good-spirited, and potentially useful they are.