The Process and the Product: a Bibliography of Scholarship About Legal Scholarship - Mary Beth Beazley and Linda H. Edwards

• Citation: Vol. 49 No. 3
• Publication year: 1998

The Process and the Product: A Bibliography of Scholarship About Legal Scholarship by Mary Beth Beazley* and

Linda H. Edwards**

This bibliography of scholarship about legal scholarship was originally prepared for the 1997 Conference of the Association of Legal Writing Directors.¹ The Conference explored the rapidly developing area of scholarship by legal writing professors² and the ways in which this important scholarship³ can be encouraged. Characteristically, when writing teachers turn their attention to a particular kind of writing project, they begin by examining both the genre and the creative activity the genre employs—that is, the process and the product. This bibliography is one result of that study. We hope that it will prove helpful to anyone interested in legal scholarship, especially to law faculty in the early stages of their scholarly careers.

Some may criticize this "meta-scholarship" as just so much pointless navel-gazing. However, serious examination of the genre of legal scholarship serves at least two important functions: it renders the scholarly life more accessible to newcomers to the academy, and it sustains a conversation that can identify and question assumptions that might otherwise hold the academy captive. If the academy is to remain open to new ideas, we must critically examine what makes scholarship valuable and how best to produce that valuable scholarship.

The product and the process of legal scholarship have spawned a large body of written comment. Consequently, we did not attempt an exhaustive list of sources. Rather, to keep the bibliography at a workable length, we selected sources that should be most useful to the largest number of readers. We did not include the many comments on the scholarship of particular doctrinal areas. However, we did include representative articles discussing the value of newly-emerging forms of scholarship. The implications of these new scholarly schools transcend doctrinal boundaries, potentially questioning the unstated and unexamined values preferenced in traditional doctrinal scholarship. Thus, these rapidly developing varieties of scholarship merit the attention of any serious legal scholar.

The first category identifies important text on the subject of scholarly writing. While it is written primarily for law students, it has much to offer to faculty scholars as well. The second category lists citations to relevant websites, while the third lists leading symposia on the subject of legal scholarship. Some articles included in a symposium are also listed individually under the appropriate subject category; however, space would not allow us to list all symposium articles separately.

Categories of individual articles follow the list of symposia. Many articles could reasonably be listed under several categories, but we have resisted the temptation to maximize the number of listings for each article. Instead, we listed most articles under only the most appropriate category so that each category would better direct a reader to articles that are most on point. A few articles were sufficiently relevant to several categories to justify multiple listings. In some cases, articles in response to other articles are listed both individually and as part of the listing for the article generating the response.

The first subject category, "How and Why To Do Scholarship," covers articles whose content is primarily practical, offering suggestions about how to select a topic, carve out time for writing, solicit feedback, market the finished product, and develop a long-range plan for scholarship over the length of a career. Some of these articles also comment on the value of scholarship to the writers themselves.

The next category, "The Broader Value of Scholarship," identifies articles examining the value of scholarship to the substantive development of law, to law practice, and to law teaching. Many of these articles argue that legal scholarship serves an important function, while some dare to question the assumption that all law teachers should be encouraged to generate article after article for the duration of their careers. In the third subject category, "Comments on Scholarship in General," we list articles that comment on the genre of legal scholarship and on the nature of the enterprise itself. Many of these articles also criticize one or more aspects of current legal scholarship.

The fourth subject category contains articles primarily commenting on the development of emerging forms of scholarship, including interdisciplinary scholarship, clinical scholarship, and empirical scholarship. This category also includes comments on those varieties of scholarship intimately related to particular political positions, such as feminist scholarship, the scholarship of race, critical legal studies, and law and economics.⁴

Finally, the last category lists articles that critique the publication process. The subjects of these articles range from the recurring complaints about the domination of student-run journals to the more recent explorations of the implications of electronic publishing.

Books

Elizabeth Fajans & Mary R. Falk, Scholarly Writing For Law Students (1995). Though written primarily for law students, this wonderful book can teach us all a great deal about how to undertake a scholarly writing project.

Website Information

Michael H. Hoffheimer, The 1998 On-Line Directory of Law Reviews and Scholarly Legal Periodicals .

Wake Forest University Professional Center Library for Law & Management (a website containing links to publishers' & journal copyright permission pages; designed to facilitate contacting copyright holders for permission to use copyrighted materials, including scholarly writing and teaching materials).

Symposia on Law Reviews or Legal Scholarship

The citations below list symposia, projects, colloquia, and forums relevant to legal scholarship. Citations to articles from many of these issues are listed also in various other categories below. The citations are listed in reverse chronological order and alphabetically by title within each year. The page number listed is the first page of the introduction, if any, or of the first article in the symposium.

Symposium, The New Legal Writing Scholarship, 20 legal stud. F. 1 (1997).

Colloquy on United States Legal Scholarship, 81 iowa L. rev. 1467 (1996).

Project, Law Schools and Legal Scholarship, 21 L. & soc. inquiry 967 (1996).

Symposium on Trends and Citations in Legal Scholarship, 71 chl.- Kent L. Rev. 909 (1996).

Symposium on Writing Across the Margins, 53 wash. & LEE L. REV. 943 (1996).

Special Issue, Law Review Conference, 47 stan. L. rev. 1117 (1995).

Symposium on Law Review Editing: The Struggle Between Author and Editor over Control of the Text, 70 chi.-kent L. rev. 71 (1994).

Symposium, Legal Education, 91 mich. L. rev. 1921 (1993) (Although the theme of this symposium is legal education generally, many of the authors are responding to Judge Harry Edwards's article The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, published at 91 mich. L. Rev. 34 (1992), and discuss the place of legal scholarship as part of that response).

Symposium, Nova, Humor in the, Law Review, 17 nova L. rev. 664 (1993).

Project, A Symposium on Legal Scholarship, 63 u. colo. L. rev. 521 (1992).

Project, Symposium on Race Consciousness and Legal Scholarship, 1992 u. ill. L. rev. 945.

Symposium on Automation and the Changing Environment of Legal Scholarship, 83 L. LIBR. J. 623 (1991).

Colloquy, Currents in Clinical Scholarship, 35 n.y.L. sch. L. rev. 1 (1990).

Project, Legal Scholarship, 39 J. LEGAL educ. 313 (1989).

Colloquium on Legal Scholarship, 13 nova L. rev. 1 (1988).

Project, Legal Scholarship in the Common Law World, 50 mod. L. rev. 677 (1987).

Project, Legal Scholarship, 37 J. LEGAL educ. 1 (1987).

Project, American Legal Scholarship: Directions and Dilemmas, 33 j. Legal educ. 403 (1983).

Project, Legal Scholarship: Its Nature and Purposes: A Symposium, 90 yale L.J. 955 (1981).

Articles

How and Why To Do Scholarship

Robert h. Abrams, Sing Muse: Legal Scholarship for New Law Teachers, 37 j. LEGAL educ. 1 (1987).

Dennis Archer, The Importance of Law Reviews to the Judiciary and the Bar, 1991 DET. C.L. REV. 229.

j.m. Balkin & Sanford Levinson, How To Win Cites and Influence People, 71 CHI.-KENT L. Rev. 843 (1996).

C. Steven Bradford, As I Lay Writing: How to Write Law Review Articles for Fun and Profit, 44 J. legal educ. 13 (1994).

Jim Chen, Untenured But Unrepentant, 81 iowa L. rev. 1609 (1996).

W. Lawrence Church, A Plea for Readable Law Review Articles, 1989 WIS. L. Rev. 739.

Comment, Originality (Writing an Original Law Review Article), 6 Const. Comment 1 (1989).

Richard Delgado, How to Write a Law Review Article, 20 U.S.F. L. rev. 445 (1986).

Elizabeth Fajans & Mary R. Falk, Comments Worth Making: Supervising Scholarly Writing in Law School, 46 J. legal educ. 342 (1996) (Though written primarily for law teachers supervising student writing, this article is helpful to authors as well.).

Julius Getman, The Internal Scholarly Jury, 39 J. legal educ. 337 (1989).

Erik M. Jensen, The Unwritten Article, 17 nova L. rev. 785 (1993) (humorous essay).

Mary Kay Kane, Some Thoughts on Scholarship for Beginning Teachers, 37 J. legal educ. 14 (1987).

Arthur A. Leff, Afterward, 90 yale L.J. 1296 (1981).

Jordan H. Leibman & James R White, How the Student-Edited Law Journals Make Their Publication Decisions, 39 J. legal educ. 387 (1989).

Leonard B. Mandell, Publish or Perish: Judging an Article by its Cover, 15 N. ILL. U. L. rev. 373 (1995).

Heather Meeker, Stalking the Golden Topic: A Guide to Locating and Selecting Topics for Legal Research Papers, 1996 utah L. rev. 917 (primarily for students, but helpful for faculty authors as well; includes representative pre-emption policies).

Gerald L. Neuman, Law Review Articles that Backfire, 21 U. MICH. J.L. Reform 697 (1988).

Gail Levin Richmond, Advice to the...