Posted by Orin Kerr:
New Harvard Law Review Policy on Article Length:
Acccording to an e-mail I just received in my inbox, the [1]Harvard
Law Review has adopted a new policy on the length of articles it will
publish:
The Harvard Law Review will give preference to articles under
25,000 words in length -- the equivalent of 50 law review pages --
including text and footnotes. The Review will not publish articles
exceeding 35,000 words -- the equivalent of 70-75 law review pages
-- except in extraordinary circumstances.
Although academic publications from a range of other disciplines
regularly use length limitations, we are aware that we are abruptly
introducing a constraint to which the legal academy is
unaccustomed. Not surprisingly, then, we anticipate growing pains
and acknowledge that our approach runs certain risks. Still, we
hope the policy we announce today will play a modest role in
reversing a trend that has cost legal scholarship dearly. To ease
the transition, we have installed a fully functional electronic
submission system and recommend the following practices:
We encourage contributors who have submitted articles that exceed
the new length limitations to resubmit abbreviated versions of
their articles. We are sorry for the inconvenience this mid-year
change will cause and the additional work it will surely require.
Please understand that these policies, however burdensome, are
intended to enhance legal scholarship in the long run. Indeed, the
Review conceives of this new policy as a modest first step in a
longer process toward substantially shorter articles. . . .
I don't know how many authors will rewrite their articles just to
suit the preferences of the Harvard Law Review -- the HLR accepts only
a small handful of pieces by non-HLS faculty every year, so it's a
longshot for any individual author -- but it will be interesting to
see if other law reviews also supplement the recent [2]statement of
principles with more explicit length policies.
I have enabled comments.
References
1. http://www.harvardlawreview.org/
2.
file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/volokh/posts/www.harvardlawreview.org/articles_length_policy.pdf
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