Of all possible opportunities for manipulating the law-review selection process, I would guess that such "gray market" recommendations rank fairly low. In my time on the articles board at a top journal, I can't recall ever getting such a pitch from a faculty member. If we had, I suppose it might have prompted us to take a particularly close look at the article in question, but I doubt it would have had much ultimate effect on the selection process. (After all, we had to turn down articles written by faculty members whose classes we were in all the time.)

Your post, however, does raise an interesting issue about the process of soliciting faculty input on article selections - something student editors are often urged to do. While I think such input is generally valuable, there's always some risk that faculty will be more favorably disposed towards the work of friends and better-known scholars, possibly putting those without such connections at a slight disadvantage.

You may be right about the size of the gray market - but I figure that we just don't know. As for the faculty reference, I don't totally get those in practice (thought in theory I suppose they make some sense), in that I don't have a sense that they result in decision changes very often at all - could be a sign the selection process is working. Perhaps a subject worth its own post.

Given the empirical confusion over the existence of the gray market, your disclosure policy makes a lot of sense. But I think the disclosure in and of itself would change behavior. The problem is that no review wants to reveal all that goes into article selection for fear of criticism and second-guessing. Peer-reviewed journals usually keep reviewers' identities anonymous, and they do not reveal what happened to the articles they review. As a first step, I agree it would be helpful for reviews to post exactly what their procedure is. Perhaps it would lead to a system of "best practices" (natch).

I wonder if the desire for disclosure is motivated more by a sense of voyeurism than because it would have any impact on anyone's behavior. Eric.

Moi? Voyeur? I'm just, as Matt says, a person in search for the best practice.

Maybe they shouldn't all know. Maybe it makes sense to confer an informational advantage on some people, because in the absence of secrecy, one entire regime is thwarted.

Think of it this way: If a journal wants to accept and consider endorsements from certain professors, it is far more likely to do so if its regime is secret. If everyone knows, both the professors (now inundated with requests from authors they barely know) and the review (potentially inundated with endorsements from lots of professors, thus seriously diminishing the value of the signal) may find the system unworkable. With secrecy the system can function.

Hmmmm. I wonder if other mandatory disclosure regimes are subject to similar problems?