Harvard Law Review

Harvard Law Review
Abbreviated title (ISO 4)	Harv. Law Rev.
Discipline	Law
Language	English
Publication details
Publisher	The Harvard Law Review Association (United States)
Publication history	1887-present
Frequency	8/year
Impact factor (2004-2011)	2.07
Indexing
ISSN	0017-811X
LCCN	12032979
CODEN	HALRAF
OCLC no.	46968396
Links
Journal homepage Online archive

The Harvard Law Review is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School.

Overview

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the Harvard Law Review is the most cited journal and its 2011 impact factor of 3.336 ranks it second out of 134 journals in the category "Law".^[1] It is published monthly from November through June, with the November issue dedicated to covering the previous year's term of the Supreme Court of the United States. The journal also publishes the online-only Harvard Law Review Forum, a rolling journal of scholarly responses to the main journal's content.

The Harvard Law Review Association, in conjunction with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal, publishes the Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, a widely followed authority for legal citation formats in the United States.

History

The Harvard Law Review published its first issue on April 15, 1887, making it the oldest operating student-edited law review in the United States.^[2] The establishment of the journal was largely due to the support of Louis Brandeis, then a recent Harvard Law School alumnus and Boston attorney who would later go on to become a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.

From the 1880s to the 1970s editors were selected on the basis of their grades; the president of the Review was the student with the highest academic rank. The first female editor of the journal was Priscilla Holmes (1953-1955, Volumes 67-68);^[3] the first woman to serve as the journal's president was Susan Estrich (1977), who later was active in Democratic Party politics and became the youngest woman to receive tenure at Harvard Law School; its first minority president was Raj Marphatia (1988, Volume 101), who is now a partner at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray;^[4][5][6] its first African-American president was current US President Barack Obama (1991);^[7][8] its first openly gay president was Mitchell Reich (2011);^[9] its first Asian-American officer was Amy Chua, who served as executive editor (1986).^[10][11]

Gannett House, a white building constructed in the Greek Revival style that was popular in New England during the mid-to-late 19th century, has been home to the Harvard Law Review since the 1920s. Before moving into Gannett House, the journal resided in the Law School's Austin Hall.

Since the change of criteria in the 1970s, grades are no longer the primary basis of selection for editors. Membership in the Harvard Law Review is offered to select Harvard law students based on first-year grades and performance in a writing competition held at the end of the first year except for twelve slots that are offered on a discretionary basis.^[12][13][14] The writing competition includes two components: an edit of an unpublished article and an analysis of a recent United States Supreme Court or Court of Appeals case.^[12] The writing competition submissions are graded blindly to assure anonymity.^[14][15] Fourteen editors (two from each 1L section) are selected based on a combination of their first-year grades and their competition scores. Twenty editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. The remaining twelve editors are selected on a discretionary basis. According to the law review's webpage, "Some of these discretionary slots may be used to implement the Review's affirmative action policy."^[12] The president of the Harvard Law Review is elected by the other editors.^[13][16]

Alumni

Prominent alumni of the Harvard Law Review include:

United States Presidents

• Barack Obama, served as president of volume 104^[17]

Supreme Court Justices

• Stephen Breyer, served as articles editor of volume 77^[18]
• Felix Frankfurter^[19]
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, served as editor for one year before transferring to Columbia Law School^[20]
• Elena Kagan, served as supervising editor of volume 99^[21]
• John G. Roberts, Jr., served as managing editor for volume 92^[22]
• Antonin Scalia, served as notes Editor for volume 73^[23]
• Edward Sanford

Other jurists

• Michael Boudin, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, served as president of volume 77^[24]
• Henry Friendly, late judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, served as president^[25]
• Pierre Leval, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, served as notes editor^[26]
• Debra Ann Livingston, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit^[26]
• James L. Oakes, late judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit^[26]
• Learned Hand, late judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, served as an editor but later resigned.
• Richard Posner, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, served as president of volume 75^[27]

Cabinet secretaries

• Dean Acheson, Secretary of State^[28]
• Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security and former judge on United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit^[29]
• William Coleman, Jr., Secretary of Transportation, Brown v. Board of Education attorney, and first African-American Supreme Court clerk^[30]
• Elliot Richardson, Attorney General, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Commerce, served as president (1947)^[31]

Other U.S. government officials

• Ted Cruz, United States Senator for the state of Texas,^[32]
• Paul Clement, former U.S. Solicitor General, served as Supreme Court editor^[33]
• Archibald Cox, late U.S. Solicitor General^[34]
• Christopher Cox, former chairman of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission^[35]
• Viet Dinh, former Assistant Attorney General, served as Bluebook editor^[36]
• Michael Froman, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs in the Obama Administration^[37]
• Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commissions^[38]
• Erwin N. Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon^[39]
• Alger Hiss, former U.S. State Department Official and alleged spy^[40]
• Michael Leiter, former Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center,^[41] president of volume 113^[42]
• Barry B. White, United States Ambassador to Norway^[43]
• Mark S. Martins, Brigadier General in the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, Chief Prosecutor of Military Commissions^[44]

Other government officials

• Preeta D. Bansal, former New York State Solicitor General, served as supervising editor^[45]
• Allan Gotlieb, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States^[46]
• Eliot Spitzer, former New York Governor^[47]
• Robert Stanfield, former Premier of the Province of Nova Scotia, and former leader of Canada's Official Opposition. He was the Review's first Canadian editor in the late 1930s.^[48]

Academics

• Stephen Barnett, legal scholar at University of California, Berkeley School of Law who opposed the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970^[49]
• Derek Bok, former Harvard University president^[50]
• Kingman Brewster, late Yale University president, served as treasurer^[51]
• Amy Chua, John M. Duff Professor of Law, Yale Law School, served as executive editor^[52]
• Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of Howard University Law School and NAACP Litigation Director^[53]
• Harold Koh, former Dean of Yale Law School^[54]
• David Leebron, president of Rice University, served as president^[55]
• William C. Powers, president of University of Texas, served as managing editor^[56]
• Jamie Raskin, constitutional law professor at Washington College of Law at American University and Maryland State Senator
• John Sexton, president of New York University^[57]
• John H. Garvey, president of The Catholic University of America^[58]

Writers and journalists

• Archibald MacLeish, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet^[59]
• Jeffrey Toobin, print and broadcast journalist^[60]

Other alumni/ae

• Nadine Strossen, former American Civil Liberties Union president^[61]
• Andrew Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia^[62]

Highly cited articles

• Brandeis, Louis; Warren, Samuel (1890). "The Right to Privacy". Harvard Law Review 4 (5): 193–220. doi:10.2307/1321160. 
• Thayer, James B. (1893). "The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law". Harvard Law Review 7 (3): 129–156. doi:10.2307/1322284. 
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1897). "The Path of the Law" (PDF). Harvard Law Review 10 (8): 457. doi:10.2307/1322028. 
• Chafee, Zechariah (1919). "Freedom of Speech in Wartime". Harvard Law Review 32 (8): 932–973. doi:10.2307/1327107. 
• Fuller, Lon L. (1949). "The Case of the Speluncean Explorers". Harvard Law Review 62 (4): 616–645. doi:10.2307/1336025. 
• Bickel, Alexander M. (1955). "The Original Understanding and the Segregation Decision". Harvard Law Review 69 (1): 1–65. doi:10.2307/1337652. 
• Wechsler, Herbert (1959). "Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law". Harvard Law Review 73 (1): 1–35. doi:10.2307/1337945. 
• Breyer, Stephen (1970). "The Uneasy Case for Copyright: A Study of Copyright in Books, Photocopies, and Computer Programs". Harvard Law Review 84 (2): 281–351. doi:10.2307/1339714. 
• Calabresi, Guido; Melamed, A. Douglas (1972). "Property Rules, Liability Rules and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral". Harvard Law Review 85 (6): 1089–1128. doi:10.2307/1340059. 
• Brennan, William J. (1977). "State Constitutions and the Protection of Individual Rights". Harvard Law Review 90 (3): 489–504. doi:10.2307/1340334. 
• Unger, Roberto M. (1983). "The Critical Legal Studies Movement". Harvard Law Review 96 (3): 561–675. doi:10.2307/1341032. 
• Cover, Robert (1983). "Nomos and Narrative". Harvard Law Review 97 (4): 4–68. doi:10.2307/1340787. 
• Powell, H. Jefferson (1985). "The Original Understanding of Original Intent". Harvard Law Review 98 (5): 885–948. doi:10.2307/1340880. 
• Fineman, Martha (1988). "Dominant discourse, professional language, and legal change in child custody decisionmaking". Harvard Law Review 101 (4): 727–774. doi:10.2307/1341172. 
• Kennedy, Randall L. (1989). "Racial Critiques of Legal Academia". Harvard Law Review 102 (8): 1745–1819. doi:10.2307/1341357. 
• Amar, Akhil Reed (1994). "Fourth Amendment First Principles". Harvard Law Review 107 (4): 757–819. doi:10.2307/1341994. 
• Kagan, Elena (2001). "Presidential Administration". Harvard Law Review 114 (8): 2245–2385. doi:10.2307/1342513. 

See also

• Harvard Law Record

References

External links

• Official website