Northwestern University Law Review


The Northwestern University Law Review is a law review and student organization at Northwestern University School of Law. The Law Reviews primary purpose is to publish a journal of broad legal scholarship. The Law Review publishes six issues each year. Student editors make the editorial and organizational decisions and select articles submitted by professors, judges, and practitioners, as well as student pieces. The Law Review extended its presence onto the web in 2006 and regularly publishes scholarly pieces on Northwestern University Law Review Online .
WWW Official Site

History

The Northwestern University Law Review was founded in 1906 by a faculty vote as the Illinois Law Review. It is the seventh oldest surviving law review in the United States, and only the second notable law review established outside the Northeast. Initially, the Law Review was run by the faculty with students only allowed limited roles as associate editors. By 1932, full editorial control of Northwestern's law review had been handed over to the students.
At the journal's founding John Henry Wigmore, the first full-time Dean of Northwestern Law School, was a frequent contributor. Wigmore penned "adversarial editorials that directly addressed the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States and the 'cowardly' members of the Chicago Bar Association." It has been suggested that Wigmore was motivated to help found a journal after his experience "at Harvard Law School during 1887 and of the first editorial board of the Harvard Law Review."
In 1952, the journal was renamed to Northwestern University Law Review although the existing volume number was retained.

Symposium

In addition to individual contributions, the Law Review has a history of special symposium issues on a broad range of topics.
Recent symposium issues have included:
  • Racial Justice After SFFA v. Harvard
  • Data Justice: How Innovative Data is Transforming the Law
  • Fraud and the Erosion of Trust
  • Reimagining Property in the Era of Inequality
  • Second Amendment’s Next Chapter
  • Rethinking Solitary Confinement
  • Originalism
  • Equal Protection and the Social Sciences 30 Years After McCleskey v. Kemp
  • Democratizing Criminal Law
  • Free Speech Foundations
  • Institutional Design and General Welfare
  • 100 Years Under the Income Tax
  • Festschrift in Honor of Professor Martin H. Redish
  • The Legacy of Justice Stevens

Northwestern University Law Review Online

The Northwestern University Law Review Online is a scholarly legal journal that is the online companion to the Northwestern University Law Review located at the Northwestern University School of Law. Although its essays are published online, its scholarly and journalistic standards are equal to that of the print Law Review.
Formed in 2006, Northwestern University Law Review Online is the first scholarly weblog to be operated by a major law review. It features legal commentary in the form of essays, debates, series, book reviews, and responses to print Law Review pieces. The format of NULR Online allows scholars to publish their thoughts within weeks of an emerging legal development anywhere within the field of legal inquiry, and provides a convenient forum for scholars to exchange ideas in the wake of such developments in the form of debates or multi-contributor series.
NULR Online has also on occasion published special symposium issues including:
  • Anita Bernstein’s ''The Common Law Inside the Female Body''

Notable alumni

The Law Review has been staffed and managed by numerous individuals who went on to become well-known legal scholars and practitioners.

Former Editors-in-Chief

Other Editorial Officers

Specified contributors

The Law Review History specifically notes a "distinguished list" of contributors including:
Beyond the Law Reviews traditional legal scholarship, it has published contributions from noted philosopher F. S. C. Northrop, the Right Reverend James A. Pike, Erle Stanley Gardner, and J. Edgar Hoover.