David J. Bederman, 25 Years of Student Scholarship and Editorship for the Emory International Law Review

• Citation: Vol. 25 No. 1
• Publication year: 2010

25 YEARS OF STUDENT SCHOLARSHIP AND EDITORSHIP FOR THE EMORY INTERNATIONAL LAW REVIEW

David J. Bederman*

While I have written elsewhere about the influence of both student-edited and professional journals of international law,1 it is a distinct honor and privilege for me to write this forward of the twenty-fifth volume of the Emory International Law Review. I have served as the faculty advisor for the Review

since I joined the Emory Law School faculty in the summer of 1991. I have advised the Review, its editorial leadership, and its candidate-members writing their Comments for most of the years that it has been publishing.2 I have seen lots of changes in the way this student-edited international law journal has approached its subject—and its audience—for a quarter of a century.

I could write at length about the professional voices of international law that have appeared in the pages of the Review over the past twenty-five years. These have included the articles of leading practitioners, distinguished jurists, and (of course) prominent legal academics. Many of these articles have contributed significantly to international legal discourse and have advanced debate in a number of important areas of public and private international law,

U.S. foreign relations law, comparative law, and trade and international

economic law.

Most of the attention that law reviews receive is attributed to their publication of “professional” pieces by established scholars and practitioners in the field. This is profoundly mistaken and assumes two things. The first is that law reviews are mere conduits for the dissemination of fully-formed and realized practitioner pieces. This premise holds that there is no real “value added” in the student editorial process that is the hallmark of student-edited

* K.H. Gyr Professor in Private International Law, Emory University School of Law; Faculty Advisor,

Emory International Law Review (1991–present).

1. See, e.g., David J. Bederman, Appraising a Century of Scholarship in the American Journal of International Law, 100 AM. J. INT’L L. 20 (2006); see also David J. Bederman & Jonathan C. Hamilton, Agents of International Discourse: A Conspectus on the Future of International Law Journals, 40 VA. J. INT’L

   L. 817 (2000); David J. Bederman, I Hate International Law Scholarship (Sort Of), 1 CHI. J. INT’L L. 75 (2000).

2. The Emory International Law Review began its publishing life under the title Emory Journal of

International Dispute Resolution for its first three...