Foreword.

• Author: Lehman, Jeffrey S.

Why celebrate?

Some people hate law reviews. They would think it unseemly to celebrate a centennial such as this. They might compare it to a 1448 celebration of the first hundred years of the Bubonic Plague.

Their criticisms are familiar. Why do we entrust the development of the scholarly canon to second- and third-year law students? Why do law reviews publish really bad things and reject really good things? Why do they encourage a style of argument in which each article must begin by summarizing all that has been written before? Why do they insist that any assertion of fact, no matter how trivial, be supported by a citation, while being so willing to accept for the purpose any published authority, including a Marvel Comic Book? And what about that silly Bluebook?

In the following Essay, I will endeavor to provide a unified field theory of Michigan Law Review exceptionalism. Part I summarizes the familiar criticisms of law reviews generally. Part II explores the distinctive history of the Michigan Law Review, a history that is different from the history of other law journals. Part III considers several reasons why it might be appropriate to celebrate the centennial of the Michigan Law Review even if it might not be appropriate to celebrate the centennial of the Bubonic Plague. And Part IV offers some concluding observations.

[Editors' Note: We know you think we made Dean Lehman put that "roadmap" paragraph in. But we didn't. He put it in to tease us. By the way, we don't actually think it is a good roadmap paragraph. For one thing, it's in the wrong place. He put it in after what he calls "Part I." And he doesn't do what he says he will do in Parts II and III. But he won't let us edit it. He won't even let us add footnotes! Sigh.]

According to Elizabeth Brown's book, Legal Education at Michigan (1959), the sequence of events that launched the Michigan Law Review went like this. First, an entrepreneurial law student named Gustavus Ohlinger urged then-dean Harry Burns Hutchins to found a law journal at Michigan. Hutchins liked the idea and took it to the faculty. His colleagues concurred and volunteered to submit their articles for publication without compensation, deciding instead that profits from the venture should go towards expansion of the library.

The purpose of the Review was described in the November 1902 inaugural issue as follows:

[T]o give expression to the legal scholarship of the University, and to serve the profession and the...