Letter to the editor
| Date | 01 April 2010 |
40 ELR 10360 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 4-2010
L E T T E R T O T H E E D I T O R
To the Editor:
We don’t like bullies. Adults shouldn’t
abuse children, and lawyers shouldn’t
pick on law students—unfairly. Yet,
that’s what happened in these page s in
February, when Colleen M. Auer, an
attorney in Arizona, attacked a former
student of ours, Meredith Marder, for
her Note, e Battle to Save the Verde:
How Arizona’s Water Law Could Destroy
One of Its Last Free-Flowing Rivers, 51
A. L . R. 175 (2009).
Ms. Auer’s a rticle quibbles with
essentia lly every aspect of Ms. Mard-
er’s Note, which shouldn’t be surpris-
ing, g iven th at Ms. Auer is heavily
invested as a n advocate for one side of
the controvers y.
We have no interest here in rehash-
ing and rebutt ing her arg uments, but
one sma ll illustr ation of her rhetorical
strateg y should suce to convey Ms.
Auer’s general approach. She dismisses
the Note be cause Marder is not an
expert in the eld. at’s true: Marder
was a second-year law student when
she w rote the Note. By Auer’s reason-
ing, no law student could ever plau-
sibly publi sh any thing. We strong ly
encoura ge readers to read Ms. Mard-
er’s piece, Ms. Auer’s response, and to
judge for themselves.
Less easily forgiven than a zealous
advocate’s excessive rage is the decision
of the editors of the Environmental Law
Reporter to publish an advocate’s brief
masquerading as objective scholarship.
Worse still, the editors introduced Ms.
Auer’s piece with a Publisher’s Note
(since corrected to be labeled an Edi-
tor-in-Chief’s Note), explaining that
they published t his attack on a student
because the Auer attack “was refused
publication” in the Arizona Law Review.
Indeed it was, as t he editors saw it as
an ad hominem attack that failed to deal
with the substa ntive issues. Twice the
editors gave Ms. Auer a chance to clean
up the piece.
So it is disappointing to us, as schol-
ars who respect this journal and have
published in its pages, to see the editors
so easily hoodwinked into publishing
an attack on a student.
Very truly yours,
Robert Glennon
Marc Miller
Barak Orbach
Carol Rose
Rogers College of Law
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Editor’s Response:
Law students are not children, and
the law review publication process is
not a game. Law students are adults,
many with prior careers or time spent
interning or working at organizations
involved in active controversies. At
ELR, we treat student notes the same
as any written submission when con-
sidering whether to publish the work.
We publish students alongside practic-
ing attorneys and academics because we
feel their pieces merit it, not because we
apply a dierent set of standards to stu-
dent writing. We do recognize dierent
experience levels among our writers, be
they students or not, and do invest vary-
ing levels of eort in assisting authors in
preparing their pieces for publication.
Sometimes the assistance is accepted,
sometimes not.
e decision to publish Colleen
M. Auer’s article was not made easily.
When the submission was received, we
declined because her response was more
appropriately published in the Arizona
Law Review. When, after some time,
the author replied that the Arizona
Law Review had refused publication,
our editorial calculation changed. We
requested a revision of the article for
consideration. e author submitted
a revised draft, but requested that we
publish the original submission.
A practicing attorney was claiming
to be disadvantaged in the realm of
public debate by a published piece to
which she was unable to respond. Our
ultimate decision to publish her article
was based on that fact and not on the
merits of the article as an original sub-
mission. I would have preferred that the
article we published were dierent in
many respects, but at t he end of t he day,
the content of the article is the decision
of the author. Our role is to try to help
authors strengthen their pieces, not to
write them.
ELR’s purpose is to be a forum for
discussion and debate, and that purpose
informs our editorial decisions. I would
hope the Arizona faculty and students
would submit a substantive response to
Ms. Auer’s article to ELR News & Anal-
ysis. It would be met with open arms.
Scott Schang
Editor-in-Chief
Copyright © 2010 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.
To continue reading
Request your trial