Law Review

One of the greatest achievements a student can obtain in law school, or any sort of educational institute for that matter, is scholarly publication.  A well-written article or Note impresses potential employers, can be cited in an annotation or legal encyclopedia, or may even get cited in a Supreme Court opinion.  Student scholarship is a demonstration of a student’s ability to master complex concepts and discuss them in an interesting new light.  Students who are published demonstrate to their respective professional communities they are competent and that they can contribute to the progress of their field.  Good scholarship is one way a student can help shape the law.

With that said publishing a scholarly work takes serious time and effort and will likely saturate your life for a good period of time.  Forget about free time for a while.  You will be fussing over commas and spending hours trying to get a sentence perfect.  After all, once a work is published, it is out there for everybody to see.  A published work must be polished, intelligent and most importantly, logically sound.  If shaping the law is what you are after, a poorly written work can be the antithesis of what you are trying to achieve.  A bad argument on your part can easily be cited to show why your position is wrong. 

The students chosen to be published in the Thomas Jefferson Law Review (TJLR) go through a grueling process to ensure their Notes are something of which they can be proud of.  The process takes almost an entire academic year and requires nearly constant focus. 

The Notes published in TJLR are typically selected from a group of Notes written by TJLR’s Staff Associates every semester.  Staff Associates must write a Note of “publishable quality” to be formally invited to join the Editorial Board of TJLR.  Writing a Note is a semester long process that requires surviving a thesis defense in front of the Managing Board of TJLR, eight written submissions, and incorporating four rounds of edits from two editors.  Writing a Note is difficult in itself.  For students who are chosen to publish, this is just the beginning.

Once a student is chosen to be published based on their Note, more editing and revision begins.  This time, the timeframe is truncated.  Generally, a publication editor will edit the document and make significant large-scale edits, such as organization.  It is also not unusual to ask the writer to incorporate more research or ask for an entire new section to be added.  The writer will typically have less than a week to incorporate these edits.  This can mean round the clock work by the writer to get it done.  The writer then sends the Note back to the editor, only to have it returned several days later with many more new edits to incorporate. This goes on four or five times until the work is close to a finished product. 

If the writing and editing wasn’t difficult enough, every source cited in the Note must be “source checked.”  Source checking is primarily due diligence on the part of TJLR and requires every source to be found in hard copy, photocopied, including book cover, spine, and title page, and finally archived in a binder.  Source checking the hundreds of footnotes in a Note can take hours upon hours and is probably the last thing any author wants to do after spending all that time writing.  Fortunately, it is the last major hurdle over which the author must conquer. 

TJLR is not the only avenue for a TJSL student to publish.  Many ways of getting published exist.  There are even services, such as ExpressO, that will submit your written work to almost any law review and journal out there for $2.20 per submission.  LexOpus will submit your work to any of their participating journals for free.  Being a published student is really a rewarding experience.  Apart from being able to provide your own Lexis or Westlaw citation on your resume, it can define you as a professional and make you stand out in your field of legal expertise.

In case you haven't noticed, the newest edition of Thomas Jefferson Law Review (TJLR) is now available.  This issue is jam packed with exciting content, authored by both professors and students.  TJLR can be found on tables around campus, on stands, and in the library.  Be sure to pick one up.  They are free to students, so don't hesitate.

A Law Review is primarily composed of Articles and Notes.  Generally, Articles are written by professors from universities and law schools across the country and around the world.  Articles are generally longer in length, and provide an in depth look and analysis of some legal issue.  Notes, on the other hand, are generally written by law students.  Typically, TJLR publishes Notes from TJSL students.  Notes are usually shorter in length than articles and consist of analysis of an unsettled area of law.  Students who publish Notes in TJLR spend close to a year writing and editing.  TJLR and some of its student Note authors have even been honored with the Burton Award, which is one of the highest honors granted to published students.  In fact, with four Burton Awards, Thomas Jefferson School of Law is tied with Stanford Law School for earning the most

Burton Awards in California.     

The new issue of TJLR really grabs your attention with the Lead Article, written by Ronald J. Placone, Ph.D., of Carnegie Mellon University.  The Article, entitled “The United States Supreme Court: A Decline in Civility,” discusses whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinions involving abortion are becoming more or less civil.  The analysis compares the pre-1987 Burger court against the post-1987 Rehnquist court, and uses analysis of variance (MANOVA and ANOVA) and keyword analysis, a type of text analysis developed at Carnegie Mellon University.

Ray L. Ngo, a solo practitioner, authored an Article entitled “The Elephant in the Room: A Critique of California’s Constitutional Amendment Process that Gave Birth to the Baby Elephant (Proposition 8) and A Call for Its Reform.” The Article discusses the voter initiative power in California, its relationship with the very controversial Proposition 8, and the California Supreme Court decision that ruled Proposition 8 was a lawful exercise of the voter initiative process.

Several students from TJSL also authored Notes appearing in the current issue of the TJLR.  Bunkosal Chhun ’11, authored a Note entitled “Catcalls: Protected Speech or Fighting Words.”  The Note looks at what constitutes a “catcall” and whether they should be considered unprotected speech under the fighting words exception to the First Amendment.  Jaime Moss ’12, wrote a Note entitled “Patients at Risk: The Need to Amend The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to Ensure the Safety of Imported Prescription Drugs.”  In her Note, she looks at problems associated with the perceived lack of safety regulations for prescription drugs imported into the United States.  Noah Wald ’12, wrote a Note entitled “Don’t Circumvent My Dongle! Misinterpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Threatens Digital Security Technology.”   Noah’s Note criticizes a recent decision by the Fifth Circuit, which Noah contends misinterpreted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and does not offer enough protection to software developers who use “dongle” technology.  His analysis focuses on the negative impacts the court’s decision has had on the music industry.  James Wolken ‘12 also added to the scholarship of TJLR with his Note entitled “Valencia’s Reasonable Belief Test: Expanding the Scope of Burglary in California One Window Screen at a Time.” In his Note he criticizes the interpretation of California’s burglary statute by California courts. 

The current issue of TJLR will certainly have something of interest to you.  Be sure to pick one up today!

The annual Thomas Jefferson Law Review (TJLR) Writing Competition could be your ticket on to law review.  Membership on law review is known as one of the most prestigious activities one can engage in while in law school.  Membership on law review will also greatly improve your writing ability and legal analysis and may very well be the path to a prominent internship, clerkship, or career.  All of the benefits of membership on law review are too numerous to list.

TJLR automatically invites students onto law review who have either ranked in the top five percent of their class after the first semester or in the top fifteen percent after their second semester of studies.  If you don't fall into one of those categories after your first year, don't fret.  The writing competition could be your answer. 

Students in the top fifty percent of their class, but outside of the top fifteen percent of their class, will receive invitations to participate in the writing competition.  Writing competition entries will be judged and used to determine who will be invited to join TJLR.  All entries will be judged anonymously.  Students participating will receive a private identification number from student services prior to the start of the competition. 

The writing competition will take place in mid to late July and contestants will be allowed nine days to complete the competition.  The competition consists of two portions, a problem and an editing assignment.   The problem will consist of an area of unsettled law in which you must argue, using a closed universe of sources, either one side or the other, or for a solution to the issue.  The editing assignment will check competitor's attention to detail and require editing of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and footnotes.  Complete rules and details will be released this summer as the competition draws near. 

Those that are invited onto TJLR will begin as Staff Associates.  Staff Associates will spend the Fall semester writing Notes.  The Note writing process is a mandatory requirement of TJLR membership and Staff Associates that successfully complete the Note writing process will be invited onto law review as full members of the editorial board.  In order to successfully complete a Note, Staff Associates must satisfy a number of requirements, including word count, number of footnotes, content, and style.  Ultimately, however, the Note must be determined to be of “publishable quality,” as the top several notes will be published in TJLR.   

Students that are interested in joining TJLR should seriously consider participating in the writing competition.  Law review is a great way to increase the strength of your resume and will certainly improve your writing skills.  Many prominent attorneys, judges, and politicians in this country were members of their schools law reviews; wouldn’t you like to follow in their footsteps? 

Invitations to participate in the writing competition will be sent out this July to students who qualify. If you have any other questions about the writing competition or TJLR, please feel free to contact either one of the incoming Chief Notes Editors: Cory Lacy at lacycr@tjsl.edu or James Wolken at wolkenja@tjsl.edu.