Abstract

This article examines the precarious position of the law review in the age of cyberspace. Part I provides essential background for this examination by showing how the law review originally developed from the interaction of academic and technological conditions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part II of the article canvasses the many criticisms made of the law review over the years, exploring why various criticisms arose when they did, and assessing the consequent attempts at reforming the law review system for the benefit of its academic and professional constituencies. Part III of the article notes that although new computer-mediated communications technologies - embodied in WESTLAW, LEXIS and the Internet's electronic journals - have improved distribution of and expanded access to law review material, those technologies, at least in those forms, have neither resolved the law review's fundamental problems nor realized their own potential. In Part IV, the author offers a "modest proposal" for the self-publishing of legal scholarship over the World Wide Web that would use the full potential of today's computer technology to overcome the limitations of the current law review system while providing legal scholars (and others) with an unprecedented range of intellectual and professional opportunities. The Conclusion of the article considers what legal scholars, law school Deans, the AALS and even the student editors of law reviews might do to accelerate and accommodate the transition to the new system of scholarly communication in law.


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