Do Judges Read the <i>Review</i>? A Citation-Counting Study of the <i>Nebraska Law Review</i> and the Nebraska Supreme Court, 1972–1996

The seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nebraska Law Review provides an opportunity to ask whether or not all the effort that goes into publishing the Review is worthwhile. One way to gauge the value of the Review is to study its influence on judges. By analyzing the frequency with which the Nebraska Supreme Court has cited the Review over the last twenty-five years, this article attempts to decide whether the Review influences judicial opinion writing. In the following discussion, we explain what we did and what we discovered.

We then make judgments about the present value of the Review to the judiciary as measured by its impact (or lack thereof) on opinions written by the Nebraska Supreme Court. Lastly, we make a recommendation regarding the creation of an editorial “partnership” between the Review and the Nebraska judiciary.