Wednesday, October 23, 2013

I agree with a lot of the points in this post about law reviews.

Here.  Law reviews are good for giving students more experience with good and bad writing (and good and bad analysis).  But law students are still novices and can't be expected to have the same level of understanding of a given field that tenured professors have.  (I seem to recall the wonderful Jack Ayer having written once about the irony of someone who couldn't get a C in a course telling an author that the author didn't understand the subject, but I can't find the quote.)  We really should rethink the law review system.

UPDATE:  Found the quote.  John D. Ayer, Aliens Are Coming! Drain the Pool!, 88 Mich. L. Rev. 1584, 1587 n. 15 (1990) ("If you have never tried it, imagine what it is like to encounter the mixture of incredulity and greed that you inspire when you, as a law professor, tell a professor of English (say) that we let students make publication decisions. Surely, it is an exquisite form of humiliation to have some infant who can't earn a C in criminal law tell you that you really don't grasp the contours of mens rea. But for anyone who has suffered under the vengefulness and pomposity of a peer review system, the regime of the law review must look like a sinful indulgence.)

1 comment:

Kenneth Barn said...

I don't know if I should laugh, but I find the quote -- by John D. Ayer, Aliens Are Coming! Drain the Pool! -- amusing. I never heard that one before. Thanks for pointing that out and I'm sorry if my comment has no connection to your article. But I did find it interesting by the way, as always. I look forward to read your future posts.