Nebraska Law Review Seventy-fifth Anniversary Issue

• Publication year: 2021

76 Nebraska L. Rev. 679. Nebraska Law Review Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Issue

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Foreword

Dean Harvey Perlman*

Nebraska Law Review Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Issue

This issue of the Nebraska Law Review marks the Review's seventy-fifth anniversary in a special way. All of the authors, including the Author of this introduction, are either former or current members of the Review. Some of the articles focus on the Review itself; others on substantive topics. No theme was imposed. A reader marching from the first page to the last (a feat to be expected of very few) will be impressed with the diversity of the experience represented by the authors, which mirrors how wide the winds spread former editors and how well most of them flourish.

Universities are facing the age of "accountability" when every program is subject to evaluation, and its value and quality must be carefully documented, preferably by measurable criteria. How should one objectively measure the contribution of the Nebraska Law Review, or any law review, to the program of its host law school? As Richard Harnsberger tells us in the opening article of this issue, the central concept of a student published academic journal has its critics. Any measurement based on a survey of academics certainly would provide mixed results. And as Judge Richard Kopf documents in this issue, a count of judicial citations will not provide much ammunition for the Review's survival.

Nonetheless, as a dean, I cannot imagine being at a law school without a law review. The College's publication of the Review signals the confidence that we have in the talents of our students. This signal flows not only to the external community but to the student body itself. Just as our clinical programs permit students the opportunity to demonstrate their preparedness to serve real clients by engaging in

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litigation against licensed members of the profession, the Review provides the opportunity for students to engage members of the profession and the academic community in an intellectual exchange where the stakes are significant. If there is an occasional contribution to legal thought, so much the better.

Student-edited reviews also serve, in subtle ways, to assure the free marketplace of legal ideas. In the never ending struggle to help the rest of the University understand the law school, I have often had to rebut the assertion that without peer reviewed publications, the quality of any law...