Reflections on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

• Author: Ginsburg, Douglas H.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was an enthusiastic assistant professor of law only recently arrived at Harvard, Steven Eberhard and Spencer Abraham were enterprising law students in search of a faculty member to provide cover for their idea of founding a new journal at the Harvard Law School. The creation of a new law journal was an almost commonplace event at Harvard in those days. The ranks of specialized publications produced by students under the auspices of the Law School had swelled during the 1970s, as various interest groups comprised of a few students, with the support of sympathetic members of the faculty, started one such journal after another. To establish yet another journal might have seemed like carrying coals to Newcastle, but Eberhard and Abraham had no commonplace journal in mind.

Indeed, the new journal they proposed was to be unlike any publication at any law school: they conceived of a journal devoted to the study of law from a conservative perspective. At the time, the idea appeared as odd as it was novel. After all, conservatives were not riding high in the saddle just then; it was only two years since the resignation of President Richard Nixon, a one-time conservative who had gone to China and at home had imposed Keynesian wage and price controls. If the timing seemed improbable, however, the institutional affiliation of the planned journal was more curious still. The faculty of the Harvard Law School was overwhelmingly hostile to conservative ideas and the student body appeared to be only a little more diverse. Indeed, the closest the school came to ideological pluralism during those years was reflected in the continuing debate between the Great Society social democrats and the adherents of the Critical Legal Studies movement about whether there really was any difference between law and politics, while one tenured and two un-tenured conservatives looked on with dismay. That the campus could sustain a forum for conservative thought was far from clear; in fact, it was near to risible.

Nonetheless, in a mischievous moment--which is all it took--I agreed to serve as the faculty advisor for the nascent Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. As it turned out, however, the effort required of me in that capacity was close to nil, owing to the diligence of the students on the Journal's staff. Despite having been denied funding from the Law School, and notwithstanding the difficulties that affect any start-up organization...