How Valid is the Often-Repeated Accusation That There Are Too Many Legal Articles and Too Many Law Reviews?

Law professors working at terminals with an Internet connection to the Web need not worry any more about whether the subject of a piece is too esoteric, too doctrinal, too complicated or even too impolitic for law review editors; we are free to write and publish on the topics of our choice. This freedom might give us a useful antidote to the substantive . . . sameness of the reviews as they now exist. On the Web, we need not endure months of frustrating or embarrassing delay while our papers are judged, peer reviewed, edited or printed in formal journals; we can disseminate our work instantly, as soon as we are satisfied with it. . . . On the Web, we are under no compulsion to tolerate the indignities and inaccuracies of line-editing: we can present our own work in our own terms, in our own "voice," in our own words, in our own ways.

These arguments are his central thrust. Nonetheless, he catalogs, somewhat uncritically, a long list of complaints directed against law reviews almost throughout their history. One of those complaints is that there are too many legal articles published in too many law reviews. An examination of this complaint, however, reveals that its origins have little relevance today, and ending the reign of student editors by Internet self-publication may not benefit legal scholarship.