Northwestern University Law Review

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The Northwestern University Law Review is a scholarly legal publication and student organization at Northwestern University School of Law. The Law Review's primary purpose is to publish a journal of broad legal scholarship. The Law Review publishes four issues each year. Student editors make the editorial and organizational decisions and select articles submitted by professors, judges, and practitioners, as well as student pieces. The Law Review recently extended its presence onto the web, and now publishes scholarly pieces weekly on the Colloquy.

First published in 1906 as the "Illinois Law Review," the law review has been staffed and managed by numerous individuals who went on to become well-known legal scholars and practitioners. Prior Editors in Chief include: Roscoe Pound, long-time dean of Harvard Law School; Justice John Paul Stevens; Governor Daniel Walker; and Newton N. Minow, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Other editorial officers have included Justice Arthur Goldberg and Adlai Stevenson.

Selected notable contributors to the Law Review include Dean Leon Green, Sir William Holdsworth, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Albert M. Kales, Nathan William MacChesney, Charles T. McCormick, Sir Frederick Pollock, Dean Roscoe Pound, Dean John Henry Wigmore, Justice Felix Frankfurter, Justice Tom Clark, Justice William O. Douglas, Justice Abe Fortas, Chief Judge Harry T. Edwards, Erwin Griswold, Archibald Cox, Paul Freund, W. Willard Wirtz, Albert Ehrenzweig, H.L.A. Hart, Gerald Gunther, Edward H. Levi, Hubert Humphrey, Brunson MacChesney, Nathaniel Nathanson, Dean James A. Rahl, Dean (now professor) David Ruder, Martin Redish, Kenneth Culp Davis, Raoul Berger, Bernard Schwartz, Ian Macneil, John Coffee, Gary Lawson, Mary Becker, Stephen Schulhofer, Nadine Strossen, Judge José A. Cabranes, Judge Richard Posner, and Cass Sunstein.

Beyond the Law Review’s traditional legal scholarship, it has published contributions from noted philosopher F.S.C. Northrop, the Right Reverend James A. Pike, Erle Stanley Gardner, and J. Edgar Hoover.

In addition to individual contributions, the Law Review has a history of special symposium issues on a broad range of topics. Recent symposium issues have included: Throwing Away the Key: Social and Legal Responses to Child Molesters (Summer 1997); Free Speech and Economic Power (Summer 1998); Empirical Legal Realism (Summer 2003); Constitutional Law and the Internet (Summer 2004); and the Centennial Symposium Issue (Fall 2005).