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. 133 2019-20

  • Akua F. Abu

  • Pierre E. Anquetil

  • Matthew Arons

  • Jordan Peter Ascher

  • Julianna Astarita

  • Alexandra Avvocato

  • Lauren Beck

  • Tzivya Beck

  • Ameze Belo-Osagie

  • Lauren Bilow

  • Marcelo M. Bonassa

  • Ahra Cho

  • Katherine Cion

  • David M. Costigan

  • Chloe Cotton

  • Raisa M. Cramer

  • D Dangaran

  • Alyxandra M. Darensbourg

  • Anna Dimitrijevic

  • Gabriel Z. Doble

  • Katherine Drews

  • Gavan W. Duffy Gideon

  • Zachary R. Edelman

  • Niki Edmonds

  • Ariel M. Fishman

  • Benjamin A. Fleshman

  • Chance Michael Fletcher

  • Mark C. Gillespie

  • Bryna K. Godar

  • Alexander Guerin

  • Mallika R. Gupta

  • Alex Harper

  • Benjamin E. Harris

  • Tianhao He

  • Nicholas T. Hine

  • Annie R. Hollister

  • Sam Horan

  • Aaron Hsu

  • Jessica Hui

  • Sun Young Hwang

  • Aiyanna Isom

  • Haylie R. Jacobson

  • Nikita Kansra

  • Joseph R. Kurtenbach

  • Charlotte Lepic

  • Anita Y. Liu

  • Spencer G. Livingstone

  • Laya Maheshwari

  • Isabel Marin

  • Emily Massey

  • Lillian McGuire

  • Zekariah McNeal

  • Grace McLaughlin

  • R.J. McVeigh

  • Vinny X. Mei

  • Kelsey A. Miller

  • Benjamin M. Miller-Gootnick

  • Matt Morris

  • Aaron Mukerjee

  • James Mulhern

  • David A. Nabors

  • Rajiv Narayan

  • Maggie J.Z. Neely

  • Lauren L. O'Brien

  • Radhe P. Patel

  • Caley M. Petrucci

  • Norah Rast

  • Shaiba Rather

  • Alexa Richardson

  • Parisa Sadeghi

  • Madeleine Salah

  • Jenny Samuels

  • Michaeljit Sandhu

  • Samantha R. Santopoalo

  • Erika S. Sato

  • Jessica J.W. Sawadogo

  • Gavriel A. Schreiber

  • Carson J. Scott

  • Rachel H. Simon

  • Andrew Skaras

  • Ross Slaughter

  • Andrew W. Smith

  • Stephanie Sofer

  • Julia A. Solomon-Strauss

  • Graham Sternberg

  • Joseph S. Tobin

  • Michael J. Torcello

  • Seanhenry N. VanDyke

  • Haihang Wang

  • Jenna Welsh

  • Avery Wentworth

  • Breanna Della Williams

  • Andrew Wingens

  • Linda Yao

  • Yi Yuan

  • Nicholas J. Zahorodny

  • Quinn Zhang

  • Zhuoran Zhong

Business Staff

  • Jennifer Heath

    Technology Operations Manager & Program Administrator

  • Denis O'Brien

    Circulation & Financial Director

  • Judi Silverman

    Bluebook Coordinator

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.

Writing Competition

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 are still finalizing other changes to the competition and our accommodations process in light of Covid-19 and will update you all as soon as we have more information. We appreciate you being patient with us as we try to adjust to this dynamic situation.

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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.

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.

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

We will host virtual tip sessions to best orient you on how to approach taking the competition. We will post videos of the tip sessions by 4/14 and host a Zoom Question and Answer session on 4/16 from 4:45-615.

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Receiving the Harvard Law Review Competition Materials Off Campus

Most entrants pick up and turn in their competitions in person. If you would like to take the competition, but will not be on campus when the competition is distributed on Saturday, May 16, 2020 you may request that the competition materials be shipped to you via Federal Express. The cost for the mailing is $45. Reimbursement for the cost of mailing may be available based on financial need. A reimbursement request form will be included in the competition packet.

In order to have the competition mailed to you, you must complete the FedEx shipping form. The deadline to submit the form is Friday, May 8, 2020.

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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.

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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.

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 10 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, 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.