our editorial process
Our editorial process consists of eight steps:
Anonymization
Senior Editors’ First Cut
Cell Group Carriage Review
Senior Associate Editor Check
Senior Editors’ First Vote
Communications with Authors
Senior Editors’ Second Vote
Formatting and Publication
Work on issue 1 begins in mid-September and the issue is published January, while work on issue 2 begins in mid-January and the issue is published in mid-May.
Anonymization
The first step in the Law Review's editing process is to anonymize all submissions. This ensures that all submissions are considered on their merits. The Law Review takes this process very seriously.
Our Editorial Manager is the only person with access to the submissions as they come in. They remain the only person aware of the identities of authors until final decisions are made on whether to publish each submission. Authors are expected to remove all personally identifiable information, but in case anything is missed, our Editorial Manager checks each submission and redacts anything which could identify the author in the submission and the cover letter. A combined, redacted document is the only file accessible to the rest of the Law Review. Anonymization does not stop at redacting. Throughout the process, our Editorial Manager ensures that editors who have authored submissions, or know authors' identities, are prevented from doing any work with respect to those submissions. We recognize that the process of dealing with conflicts of interest could implicitly give others information about why a conflict exists, which may provide information into the author's identity. Thus, our Editorial Manager alone knows handles conflicts and has unilateral authority to change Cell Groups.
SEnior editors’ first cut
The second step in the Law Review's editing process is a first cut of submissions by our Senior Board. Each member of the Senior Board is assigned a share of submissions and is asked to review those articles for baseline publishability. If a Senior Editor feels an article has no reasonable chance of being published, even having gone through the improvements stage, that submission will be rejected, subject to the approval of the Editors-in-Chief and Executive Editor. Any article that passes the First Cut stage proceeds to carriage review.
CELL GROUP CARRIAGE REVIEW
The third step in the Law Review's editing process is carriage by Cell Groups. Each Cell Group is comprised of one Articles Editor, one Senior Associate Editor, one Senior Editor, and 4-6 Associate Editors. There are two stages in the carriage review process.
In the first stage, a group of Associate Editors evaluate the content of the article and its research under four headings: Thesis, Accuracy, Comprehensiveness, and Novelty. They then discuss the article with the entire Cell Group. The entire Cell Group then votes to determine whether advance the paper to the second stage.
In the second stage, the entire Cell Group reads the submission carefully for writing quality. They each propose improvements to the submission and then vote on whether the proposed improvements could realistically be implemented within two weeks. If so, the submission moves on.
Articles Editors compile carriage forms for articles that have passed carriage review. Associate Editors draft rejection letters for those that do not.
senior associate editor check
The fourth step in the Law Review's editing process is a check by Senior Associate Editors. They receive carriage forms and improvement forms from Cell Groups, ensure that all parts have been duly considered, and round out investigation of the research. The Senior Associate Editor check guarantees consistent carriage review across Cell Groups. In addition, Cell Groups may approve a submission contingent on the accuracy of any aspect of the research, which the Senior Associate Editor will be tasked with verifying. Once the Senior Associate Editor has completed their check of carriage forms, they present the form and the submission to a Senior Editor or to the Senior Board directly.
senior editors’ first vote
The fifth step in the Law Review's editing process is a vote by the Senior Board. By this time, each submission under consideration will be accompanied by a carriage form, a list of proposed improvements, and a recommendation from a Senior Associate Editor. One Senior Editor takes charge of each submission, preparing reasons both for and against publication and presenting them to the Senior Board, alongside the Senior Associate Editor who compiled that carriage form.
The Senior Board, comprising the Editors-in-Chief, Executive Editor, and all Senior Editors, will thoroughly discuss whether the submission should be published. At the end of that meeting, they will vote on whether to provisionally accept the submission for publication. Depending on that vote, the Senior Editor in charge of that submission prepares either a letter to the author detailing our requested improvements or a rejection letter.
communication with the authors
The sixth step in the Law Review's editing process is sending emails to all authors informing them of whether their submissions have been provisionally accepted for publication or rejected. All letters are sent through our Editorial Manager to preserve anonymity.
Letters to authors whose work is provisionally accepted will include a series of proposed improvements. These can range from minor spelling and grammatical mistakes to major rewrites, such as adding, moving, or removing sections. Authors have two weeks to complete these improvements and send the revised version to our Editorial Manager. Should authors disagree with a proposed improvement, it is their responsibility to communicate with the Editorial Manager long enough before the deadline such that, if the Senior Board insists on the change, the changes may be made by the end of the two-week deadline. Extensions may be granted in exceptional circumstances.
Letters to authors whose work is rejected will, to the extent possible, explain the reasons for rejection. They may also ask an author to resubmit after changing specific things. These are usually larger changes which cannot be implemented within two weeks but may not take significantly longer to fix.
SENIOR EDITORS’ SECOND VOTE
The seventh step in the Law Review's editing process is a second vote by the Senior Board. The purpose of this vote is to confirm that the author has made the requested improvements. The Senior Board retains discretion to reject a provisionally accepted article at this stage for other reasons, but in practice this rarely happens. Once an article is accepted at this second vote, the author will be identified, and the Executive Editor may commence communications with them directly.
formatting and publication
The eighth and final step of the Law Review’s editing process involves a line-edit and footnote check of accepted articles, as well as preparing the journal for general formatting, layout design, printing, and distribution.