Columbia Law Review Writing Competition 2008

The Columbia Law Review’s annual Writing Competition will take place this year from May 16 to May 23, at the close of first-year exams. Everyone interested in joining the Review must participate. Columbia students must register for the Competition on Lawnet in late spring. Details regarding the Competition and the Review will be available at Journal Day, held on April 9.

Transfer students are likewise eligible to apply to the Review through the Writing Competition. Interested transfer applicants must contact Jessie Cheng (jc2867@columbia.edu) to register for and receive information regarding the Competition prior to May 9. Each year the Review invites ten students from the rising Columbia 2L and transfer class to join the Review based on outstanding performance on the Writing Competition alone; transfer students are only considered for these ten slots. While it is the Review’s policy to notify the law school’s admissions office when a transfer applicant is invited to join the Review, this invitation does not guarantee a transfer applicant’s admittance to the law school.

Approximately 40 students from the rising 2L and transfer class will be invited to join the Review this summer.

Announcing the 2008-2010 James Milligan Law Review Fellow

Saira Mohamed is currently a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Sudan at the U.S. Department of State. She previously was an attorney-advisor for human rights and refugees in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser.

Saira received her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2005. She served as Executive Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review and is the author of “From Keeping Peace to Building Peace: A Proposal for a Revitalized United Nations Trusteeship Council,” 105 Colum. L. Rev. 809 (2005). While at Columbia, Saira was a James Kent Scholar and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and was awarded the David Berger Memorial Prize for academic excellence in international law.

Saira also received a Master of International Affairs in 2005 from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Saira is a graduate of Yale University, where she received a B.A. in History and International Studies, cum laude and with distinction in both majors, in 2000. She was the recipient of Yale’s Andrew D. White prize for the best undergraduate essay in European history in 1998.

Following law school, Saira served as law clerk to Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Saira will begin her tenure as Milligan Fellow in Winter 2008.

Announcing the Launch of Sidebar, An Online Publication of the Columbia Law Review

The Columbia Law Review is pleased to announce the launch of Sidebar, our new online supplement.

The term "sidebar" has different meanings in different contexts. In a courtroom, when attorneys and judges have sidebar conferences, they engage in frank discussion of a live legal issue. When journalists add a sidebar to a story, they provide a deeper insight or a fresh perspective on an issue covered in the accompanying text.

Sidebar, the new online publication of the Columbia Law Review serves both functions. With the new site, the Review joins a growing list of renowned legal publications, practitioners, scholars, bloggers, and others who are engaged in legal discourse online. In addition, the site provides a new take on the issues tackled by scholars in the pages of the Review's print edition, inviting experts in a variety of fields to contribute their own views.

We trust you will enjoy Sidebar as much as you enjoy the Columbia Law Review. If you are interested in contributing to Sidebar or for more information, please do not hesitate to contact the Online Editors at editor@clrsidebar.org.

The Bluebook Goes Online

The Editors of the Columbia Law Review are pleased to announce that an online version of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation was launched on Friday, February 15th. As the standard system of American legal citation, The Bluebook is the best selling law-related book in the world. Now in its eighteenth edition, it was first compiled in 1926 by Erwin Griswold, then an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and later Dean of Harvard Law School. The Bluebook is published by the Columbia Law Review as a wholly student-run joint project of the Columbia Law Review, Harvard Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal.

"It has been fantastic to contribute to the development of this new project throughout the past year," says outgoing Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review, Karin Portlock. "In particular, we hope that the new online version of The Bluebook becomes a widely used resource for the legal community."

The new online format responds to longstanding requests for a fully-featured electronic edition of The Bluebook that is easier to search, use, and teach. It allows practitioners and students with jurisdiction-specific or publication-specific citation rules to integrate these into their group, and makes an essential tool of legal writing fully accessible to the visually impaired. In addition, the online version is designed to respond to the developing needs of the legal community by addressing a wide array of evolving foreign, international, administrative, and electronic materials much more fully than is possible in the print version.

For more information about The Bluebook, please visit its newly launched website at www.legalbluebook.com.

Announcing the 2008-2010 James Milligan Law Review Fellowship Application

Eligibility for the fellowship has recently been expanded to include Review alumni who graduated up to six years ago. Interested alumni from the graduating classes of 2002 through 2008 are strongly encouraged to apply. Click here to download the application. An information sheet is also available here. Applications will be received until February 1, 2008. The Fellow will be selected in March 2008. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Review's Milligan Fellowship Coordinator, Helen Ogbara, or the Columbia Law Review Business Office at (212) 854-4398.

Announcing the 2007-2009 James Milligan Law Review Fellow

Bela August Walker received her J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2003. She served as Essay & Review Editor of the Columbia Law Review and is the author of "The Color of Crime: The Case Against Race Based Suspect Descriptions," 103 Colum. L. Rev. 662 (2003).

While at Columbia, Bela was a James Kent Scholar from 2001-2003 and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar in 2000-2001, and was awarded the Charles Bathgate Beck Prize for the best examination in real property. Bela is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, where she received a B.A. in History, cum laude, in 1999.

Following law school, Bela served as law clerk to Robert P. Patterson, Jr., of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and to Judge Sidney R. Thomas of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Currently, she is an associate at the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia. Bela will begin her tenure as Milligan Fellow in Fall 2007.

Announcing the First Recipient of the James Milligan Law Review Fellowship

Saul Zipkin received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2003. He served as Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review and is the author of "Judicial Redistricting and the Article I State Legislature," 103 Columbia Law Review 350 (2003). While at Columbia, Saul was a James Kent Scholar from 2001-2003 and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar in 2000-2001. In 1999-2000, Saul studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Saul is a graduate of Yale University, where he received a B.A. in Political Science in 1997.

Following law school, Saul served as law clerk to Judge Mark R. Kravitz of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut and to Judge Jose A. Cabranes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He is currently an associate in the litigation and appellate practices at a law firm in New Haven. Saul will begin his tenure as Milligan Fellow this Fall.

New Editorial Policy of the Columbia Law Review

Effective February 28, 2005, the Columbia Law Review will no longer review nor publish articles or essays in excess of 37,000 words in length (including text and footnotes; measured by Microsoft Word's word count feature), barring exceptional circumstances. In addition, we will give preference to articles and essays submitted under 32,000 words in length. For those who have submitted articles or essays prior to February 28, your pieces will not be subjected to this new policy, although we will offer you the opportunity to revise your piece if you wish to take advantage of our strong preference for more concise pieces. Articles that are revised and resubmitted for this purpose will be reviewed in the original order in which they were received.

This new policy reflects our commitment to what a number of law reviews around the United States have realized; we can do our part to make legal scholarship more focused and effective. If you believe that additional background material is necessary for a complete understanding of your submission, please feel free to include that information with your piece.

The following statement reflects the commitment of 12 leading law journals across the country to play an active role in moderating the length of law review articles. Specifically, law reviews at Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Texas, U. Penn., Virginia, and Yale have endorsed the statement below.

In mid-December, the Harvard Law Review conducted a nationwide survey of law faculty regarding the state of legal scholarship. Nearly 800 professors completed the survey and submitted their feedback. Complete tabulations of the survey will soon be available on the web. Importantly, the survey documented one particularly unambiguous view shared by faculty and law review editors alike: the length of articles has become excessive. In fact, nearly 90% of faculty agreed that articles are too long. In addition, dozens of respondents submitted specific comments, identifying the dangers of this trend and calling for action. Survey respondents suggested that shorter articles would enhance the quality of legal scholarship, shorten and improve the editing process, and render articles more effective and easier to read.

The law reviews listed above are very grateful for the constructive feedback and wish to acknowledge a role in contributing to this unfortunate trend in legal scholarship. To the extent that the article selection or editing process encourages the submission and publication of lengthier articles, each of the law reviews listed above is committed to rethinking and modifying its policies as necessary. Indeed, some have already done so. The vast majority of law review articles can effectively convey their arguments within the range of 40-70 law review pages, and any impression that law reviews only publish or strongly prefer lengthier articles should be dispelled.

We thank you for your input and your patience throughout this process.