Posted by Orin Kerr:
The Future of Legal Scholarship?:
News that some of the top law reviews are [1]turning to shorter
articles makes me wonder about the future of legal scholarship -- and
in particular, how the combination of blogs, SSRN, and shorter
articles might work together.
Here's one vision of the future. In a decade or two, articles
published in law reviews will average about 30-40 pages in length. The
"law review version" of the article will be the condensed core of the
argument, with relatively few footnotes. The goal of the "law review
version" of the article will be to present a relatively brief and
highly readable version of the argument for a broad audience -- sort
of like articles in the [2]Green Bag, but a bit longer. This is the
version that will go into print and be found in the stacks at the
library.
Second, each article will also have an associated website that
contains other resources relating to the article and its argument. The
website could be the law review's, or SSRN, or perhaps a blog. Either
way, the website would contain an extensive biblography, a helpful
discussion of background materials, and any other materials that a
researcher wishing to learn more might find helpful. A comment section
on the website might be available as well, allowing individuals to
leave comments about the article and carry on a discussion of the
piece in the context of a "quasi-official" site.
It seems to me that this would be a major improvement over the
existing approach of legal scholarship. The Internet allows authors to
bifurcate their scholarship into condensed and more readable versions
for publication and more extensive versions available online for those
interested in knowing more. Law reviews could focus on publishing the
condensed and readable versions, while websites containing additional
materials could be handled separately.
Your thoughts? I have enabled comments.
References
1. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_02_07.shtml#1108060955
2. http://greenbag.org/
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