Harvard Law Review Harvard Law Review Harvard Law Review

About

The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. The Review comes out monthly from November through June and has roughly 2,500 pages per volume. The organization is formally independent of the Harvard Law School. Student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions and, together with a professional business staff of three, carry out day-to-day operations.

Aside from serving as an important academic forum for legal scholarship, the Review has two other goals. First, the journal is designed to be an effective research tool for practicing lawyers and students of the law. Second, it provides opportunities for Review members to develop their own editing and writing skills. Accordingly, each issue contains pieces by student editors as well as outside authors.

The Review publishes articles by professors, judges, and practitioners and solicits reviews of important recent books from recognized experts. All articles — even those by the most respected authorities — are subjected to a rigorous editorial process designed to sharpen and strengthen substance and tone.

Most student writing takes the form of Notes, Recent Cases, and Recent Legislation. Notes are approximately 22 pages and are usually written by third-year students. Recent Cases and Recent Legislation are normally 8 pages and are written mainly by second-year students. Recent Cases are comments on recent decisions by courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court, such as state supreme courts, federal circuit courts, federal district courts, and foreign courts. Recent Legislation look at new statutes at either the state or federal level.

Student-written pieces also appear in the special November and April issues. In addition to the Supreme Court Foreword (usually by a prominent constitutional law scholar), faculty Case Comments, and a compilation of statistics about the Court’s previous Term, the November issue includes about 20 Leading Cases, which are analyses by third-year students of the most important decisions of the previous Supreme Court Term. The April issue features the annual Developments in the Law, an in-depth treatment of an important area of the law prepared by third-year editors of the Review.

All student writing is unsigned. This policy reflects the fact that many members of the Review besides the author make a contribution to each published piece.

For more information about the Harvard Law Review, see Erwin Griswold’s Glimpses of Its History (published in the 1987 Centennial Album of the Review).

Board of Editors

Vol. 134 2020-21

  • Pierre E. Anquetil

  • Matthew Arons

  • Julianna Astarita

  • Sarah Atkinson

  • Daniel Barcia

  • Jackson Hart Beard

  • Tzivya Beck

  • Ameze Belo-Osagie

  • Mateusz J. Bendisz

  • Lauren Bilow

  • Marcelo M. Bonassa

  • Alison Brockman

  • Mary F. Brown

  • Connor E. Burwell

  • Rebekah R. Carey

  • Katherine Cion

  • Katherine A. Clements

  • Zachary E. Cohen

  • Francisco I. Collantes

  • Amy Couture

  • Raisa M. Cramer

  • Javid Dharas

  • Libby Dimenstein

  • Tyler Anthony Dobbs

  • Ryan Morio Dunbar

  • Rachel Favors

  • Ariel M. Fishman

  • Chance Michael Fletcher

  • Catherine Frappier

  • Lauren Ryoko Fukumoto

  • Mark C. Gillespie

  • Bryna K. Godar

  • William Greenlaw

  • Alexander Guerin

  • Mallika R. Gupta

  • Alex Harper

  • Nicholas T. Hine

  • Sam Horan

  • Jessica Hui

  • Maria H. Huryn

  • Sun Young Hwang

  • Anna Jessurun

  • Peter Kalicki

  • Nikita Kansra

  • Abe Kanter

  • Laura Karas

  • Kaholi Kiyonami

  • Michael Klain

  • Jake L. Kramer

  • Charlotte Lepic

  • Anita Y. Liu

  • Yunhao Leslie Liu

  • Lillian McGuire

  • Fenella McLuskie

  • Zekariah McNeal

  • Madeline Medeiros Pereira

  • Vinny X. Mei

  • Priyanka Menon

  • Zachary Meskell

  • Frederick Messner

  • Kelsey A. Miller

  • Benjamin M. Miller-Gootnick

  • Seanhenry N. VanDyke

  • Kaitlynn Milvert

  • Matt Morris

  • Aaron Mukerjee

  • Daniel F. Mummolo

  • Maggie J.Z. Neely

  • Lauren L. O’Brien

  • Chinecherem O. Okoye

  • Nathan W. Raab

  • Alex Ramsey

  • Norah Rast

  • Shaiba Rather

  • Kathryn C. Reed

  • Satish Reginald

  • Alexa Richardson

  • Avisha Sabaghian

  • Parisa Sadeghi

  • Sarah A. Sadlier

  • Jenny Samuels

  • Michaeljit Sandhu

  • Erika S. Sato

  • Jessica J.W. Sawadogo

  • Gavriel A. Schreiber

  • Carson J. Scott

  • Hassaan Shahawy

  • Michael H. Shang

  • Ross Slaughter

  • Andrew W. Smith

  • L. Ash Smith

  • Limeng Sun

  • Andrew Teoh

  • Michael J. Torcello

  • Haihang Wang

  • Samuel Y. Weinstock

  • Emma P. Willems

  • Avery Wentworth

Business Staff

  • Jennifer Heath

    Information Systems Manager & Program Administrator

  • Denis O'Brien

    Circulation & Financial Director

  • Judi Silverman

    Director of Bluebook Business

Membership

Membership in the Harvard Law Review is limited to second- and third-year law students who are selected after an annual writing competition. The Review strongly encourages all students to participate in the writing competition. Harvard Law School students who are interested in joining the Review must write the competition at the end of their first year, even if they plan to take time off during law school or are pursuing a joint degree and plan to spend time at another graduate school.

Forty-eight second-year students are invited to join the Review each year. Twenty editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. Seven editors, one from each 1L section, shall be selected based on an equally weighted combination of competition scores and 1L grades. Three editors shall be selected based on an equally weighted combination of competition scores and 1L grades, without regard to section. Eighteen editors shall be selected through a holistic but anonymous review that takes into account all available information. The Review remains strongly committed to a diverse and inclusive membership.

Applicants who wish to make aspects of their identity available through the Law Review's holistic consideration process will have the opportunity to indicate their racial or ethnic identity, disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Applicants also have the option of submitting an expository statement of no more than 150 words that identifies and describes aspects of their background not fully captured by the categories provided on the form. Statements will be considered by the Selection Committee only after grading of the competition has been completed. Statements will remain anonymous and will not be evaluated for quality of writing or editing, nor will they be assigned a numerical score. Applicants are welcome to draft their expository statements before the competition week begins, and the prompt for the 150 word statement is as follows: "You may use the space below to submit a typed expository statement of no more than 150 words that identifies and describes aspects of your identity not fully captured by the categories on the previous page, including but not limited to racial or ethnic identity, socioeconomic background, disability, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation."

The Law Review expects to invite editors to join Volume 135 over the course of several days during the second half of July. Orientation for new editors is scheduled for August 3rd to August 6th. Editors are expected to be fully available for these four days. For the remaining days in August, editors will have Law Review assignments, but these assignments can be completed simultaneously with other commitments (internships, events, etc).

Writing Competition

2021 Writing Competition More information about the 2021 Writing Competition will be available in March, 2021.

Covid-19 Related Updates: We hope that everyone and their loved ones are keeping well. Given the evolving COVID-19 situation, this year’s competition will be digital and thus available to everyone remotely. We have also altered our competition accommodations policies in light of COVID-19. Please see “Competition changes in light of COVID-19” for more details.

This year, as part of our holistic consideration process, we are also providing a space for students to upload a statement of no more than 150 words that identifies and describes any challenges you may have faced during the competition as a result of COVID-19.

Deferral Policy Update: Harvard Law Review will invite students to join Vol. 135 in mid-July. Students invited to join Vol. 135 who are taking a full-year leave of absence from HLS will be allowed to defer their membership in Law Review for the year. They may then join the Law Review as members of Vol. 136 in fall 2021 and serve as editors for two years. Editors typically serve for two full academic years to ensure ample time for training, acclimation to their roles on the Review, and opportunities to make collective decisions about our work.

Students invited to join Vol. 135 who are taking a fall-semester leave of absence from HLS are encouraged to still join as editors with Vol. 135. If joining with Vol. 135, editors will be expected to complete Law Review work during the fall, even though they are on leave from HLS. They will then serve as editors for two years. Alternatively, students taking a one-semester leave may wait to join until fall of the following year (fall 2021); in that case, they will have no Law Review obligations during the 2020-2021 academic year and will participate as Law Review editors for a single year.

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The 2020 writing competition will begin on Saturday, May 16, after the completion of 1L final exams, and end on Saturday, May 23.

We will replace our usual in-person pickup with online registration in advance of the competition. We will post a registration form link here and email it to HLS students on April 23. Registration will ensure that you receive the competition but does not bind you to completing the competition. The competition registration form for HLS 1Ls is now open and will close on May 12 at 11:59 p.m. Prospective transfer students who would like to receive information about registering for the competition should email [email protected]

The competition consists of two parts. The subcite portion of the competition, worth 40% of the competition score, requires students to perform a technical and substantive edit of an excerpt from an unpublished article. The case comment portion of the competition, worth 60% of the competition score, requires students to describe and analyze a recent case. The entire competition consists of a closed universe of materials provided to all competition-takers; no outside research of any kind is allowed, and no use of any reference materials is permitted.

In the interest of clearing up confusion about the Harvard Law Review and our writing competition, this HLR factsheet notes a couple of the concerns we have heard, along with our responses.

In planning for the Competition, we encourage you to review this small sampling of different Writing Competition schedules used by current HLR editors.

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Competition Tips Session and Subcite Training Session 2020

You may download the competition tips packet here. The attached tips packet is designed to provide some specific guidance about approaching the case comment and subcite portions of the competition. Together with the two tips presentations, these materials should give you a complete picture of the writing competition. Please note that the sample competition submissions included in this packet are merely representative and are by no means definitive examples.

The April 14 tips session videos: subcite training session part 1, subcite training session part 2, and the general tips session video, are now available. We've additionally compiled in-depth subcite instructions on how to download and make subcite comments in Adobe. For a step-by-step tutorial, please see the videos posted on our YouTube channel.

A video of our April 16 writing competition Q&A session is also available on our YouTube channel.

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Housing Extension Request

The HLS Housing form is now available for students who will be participating in the Harvard Law Review Writing Competition and may need a housing extension. (Please note that participation will be confirmed and verified.) The deadline to submit is Friday, May 8. If you have questions about the housing extension please contact the HLS Housing Office. If you are still living in campus housing during the COVID-19 disruptions, it is possible to remain during the competition dates.

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Information for Transfer Students

Students should refer to the above "Covid-19 Related Updates" section for any new details on the competition process for the 2020 year.

Prospective transfer students may take the competition at the same time as Harvard Law School 1Ls. Prospective transfer students are selected on the same anonymous grading basis as Harvard 1Ls and are eligible for 38 of the spots on the Review (in other words, all spots besides the 10 allotted to Harvard 1Ls for whom first-year grades play a role). Prospective transfer students may submit an anonymized, unofficial transcript when their 1L grades are released if they would like their grades to be considered in the Law Review’s holistic review process. While being selected to join the Review in no way guarantees a transfer applicant admission to Harvard Law School, it is the policy of the Review to inform the admissions office whenever a transfer student successfully gains membership on the Review. Prospective 1L transfer students should email [email protected] if they’d like to receive emails related to the Law Review's competition.

Recognizing that the competition schedule poses unique challenges to prospective transfer applicants, the Review also allows transfer students to take the competition at the end of their 2L year. However, no student may attempt the competition more than once, and this option is only available to transfer students who did not previously take the competition. Like prospective transfer students, rising third-year students may submit their grades, but they will not be eligible for the 10 slots that incorporate first-year grades.

Information for SJD Students

SJD students at Harvard Law School may serve as editors of the Law Review. To join, SJDs take the same writing competition as JD students and are eligible for 38 of the editorial positions (all spots besides those allotted to JD 1Ls for whom first-year grades play a role). SJDs should take the competition only if they are certain they have at least two years remaining in their program of study. Additionally, as with all candidates, SJDs are permitted to participate in the writing competition only once.

Information for Students with Disabilities

The Harvard Law Review provides accommodations on the writing competition to students with documented disabilities on an individual, case-by-case basis. To request an accommodation, please complete the accommodation registration form. You may return your materials in person or by email to Lakshmi Clark-McClendon, Senior Director of Student Affairs in the Dean of Student Office or to Jennifer Heath, Program Administrator at the Law Review. If you are submitting your request via email, we suggest secure file transfer for all confidential materials.

Accommodations requests should be submitted between March 1 until April 17 and will be processed on a rolling basis. Students are strongly encouraged to submit their accommodation requests as soon as possible even if they are not yet certain they will take the competition. Please see our answers to FAQ on accommodations to learn more.

Decisions to grant reasonable accommodations are made by the Review. DOS and the Review ensure that anonymity of all entrants is preserved; no student on the Review will receive personal identifying information about any student requesting accommodation, and the competition grading process itself is fully anonymous.

The Review strongly encourages all students who need accommodations to participate in the writing competition. For more information about life on the Review, students are encouraged to attend one of our information sessions or reach out to Shaiba Rather, our Vice President/Coordination and Outreach, at [email protected].

Religious Accommodations

Students with unavoidable religious conflicts during the competition, including those fasting for Ramadan and/or observing the Sabbath, should email [email protected] to request an accommodation.

The Bluebook

The Bluebook is the definitive style guide for legal citation in the United States, compiled by the editors of the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. The Bluebook is available for purchase in hard copy, or online (including a mobile version for the iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch) at www.legalbluebook.com.