PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON the Chicago Law Review’s new faculty peer-review system. “Either the student-edited format makes sense or it doesn’t. The whole purpose of peer review is to get students OUT of the process, not to supplement a decision that would remain in the hands of second and third year law students.” I’ve reviewed articles for the Stanford Law Review in the past — I didn’t mind because they sent stuff I would have read anyway — but I thought the same thing when they asked.

Meanwhile, I have to say that I care less and less about law reviews. Increasingly it feels to me like the article is published when it’s posted on SSRN, and the actual publication in a law review later seems kind of anticlimactic. Based on casual conversation, I’d say that a lot of other legal academics feel the same way. I still submit to law reviews, but I wonder if that will be true in five years.