Introduction.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: Filip, Mark
• Date: 01 January 2014

This symposium publication of the American Criminal Law Review ("ACLR") marks the journal's fiftieth anniversary, and there is much to celebrate. In 1962, Robert Kingsley--then the dean of the University of Southern California Law School and soon-to-be appointed to the California bench--introduced the inaugural edition of the ACLR, known at the time as the Criminal Law Quarterly. Dean Kingsley's aims for the journal were self-describedly modest: to offer a few articles in each issue that would provoke thinking while also providing "some practical value in your daily practice." (1) Less than a decade later, in 1971, Samuel Dash--already a renowned professor at Georgetown Law School and soon-to-be the Chief Counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee--announced the relocation of the ACLR to Georgetown. Once again, the publication's aims were set out with modesty: Professor Dash intended for the ACLR to be organized around problem areas in the criminal law; in so doing, it would "provide a forum for commentary" while also serving "as a tool for the practitioner." (2)

Over the ensuing decades, through the pursuit of these humble aims, great work has emerged from this journal--work made all the more significant when considered against the backdrop of other developments in the legal publication field. Recent figures out of Washington and Lee University's Law Journal Rankings Project indicate that, by the end of 2012, there were nearly 1,700 scholarly legal publications in existence. (3) This count has grown exponentially over the past few decades as sources of written legal scholarship have proliferated both in print and, lately, online. Somewhat counterintuitively, this growth has been matched by a rise in critiques of the fundamental value of academic journals in the legal field. Critics have bemoaned what they perceive as a growing chasm between the output of the journals and the practical needs of actual practitioners. (4) Put differently, there has been a great questioning as to whether the sort of practitioner-oriented goals championed by Dean Kingsley and Professor Dash are still facilitated by the traditional arrangement of scholarly publishing in the legal Academy.

Yet through this tumult of increasing publications and existential critiques, the ACLR has emerged in a position of preeminence. As Robert Muse noted in his keynote speech this past March at a dinner celebrating the ACLR's fiftieth anniversary (published in this volume as "In Pursuit...