The world is awash in law reviews (pdf), and specialty business law journals are substantial subset of that. In my humble opinion, most of these law reviews could be euthanized without substantial adverse effects on the law or legal education.
Having already started one law journal early in my career (see here and here), I have some appreciation for the costs, both financial and psychic, associated with such enterprises. Nevertheless, I have found myself wondering recently whether the world might obtain a net benefit from a peer-reviewed journal for corporate and securities law scholarship.
It's not like corporate and securities law scholars have no options beyond student-edited law reviews. The Journal of Law & Economics, the Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, The Business Lawyer, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and other non-student edited journals publish corporate and securities law pieces. But none of these focuses on corporate and securities law, and the leading articles in the field still are published in general law reviews.
While I can see some advantages to connecting with the broader legal academic community, I can also see some advantages to having a peer-reviewed journal that all of us in the field regard as our "A" journal. Thoughts?
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1. Posted by Robert Schwartz on May 9, 2006 @ 16:40 | Permalink
Leave The Business Lawyer alone. It is the only Journal that has useful articles in it.
2. Posted by William Henderson on May 9, 2006 @ 16:53 | Permalink
Gordon, When you are named Editor this new "A" List journal, it will cut into your blogging. Be careful what you wish for (especially in the absence of course relief for assuming this new--thankless--duty).
3. Posted by Anon on May 10, 2006 @ 8:12 | Permalink
It might make the most sense if Iowa simply make official what some consider (rightly or wrongly) to be unofficially the case - that Hilary Sale is the faculty editor of the Journal of Corporation Law.
4. Posted by Gordon Smith on May 10, 2006 @ 9:58 | Permalink
I mentioned this to Hilary not long ago. She didn't foreclose the idea, but she wasn't jumping at the opportunity, either. It would be a lot of work and would require her to wrest the journal from the hands of the students.
5. Posted by Scott Moss on May 10, 2006 @ 11:50 | Permalink
Could this be a way for a less prestigious school to get its journal some props? Let's say I'm a non-1st-tier law school with a student-edited business/corporate journal; would my journal possibly get more prestige and respect in the field if it were faculty-edited?
Come to think of it, arguably Chicago-Kent has been doing that with some success in my field, labor and employment. It introduced a specialty labor/employment journal circa 1998, and the fact that it's peer-reviewed has been, I think, a plus, at least toward their ability to solicit good contributions. I suppose it wouldn't work if the school didn't have an especially strong faculty in the field already.
6. Posted by Fred Tung on May 10, 2006 @ 12:38 | Permalink
Further to Scott's comment, as is well-known, a few journals use a symposium-only format. A faculty member--typically but not always from the home school--organizes the symposium and recruits authors. While it's not formal peer review, it does inject some professorial oversight regarding choice of authors, and hopefully the coordinated focus of specialists involved in the symposium spurs each individual author to turn out a respectable work. Loyola Los Angeles, Law and Contemporary Problems (at Duke), and the Chicago Journal of International Law use this format almost exclusively, I believe.
7. Posted by Matt Bodie on May 11, 2006 @ 5:40 | Permalink
A modest peer-reviewed journal would be a great addition to the corp & securities field. You might want to consider a further focus, perhaps by having issues centered on certain topics. And you could run it through the web as well, allowing for more participation.
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