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 300 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 300-word statement is as follows: "You may use the space below to submit a typed expository statement of no more than 300 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 136 over the course of several days during the second half of July. Orientation for new editors is scheduled for the week of July 26th. Editors are expected to be fully available for these four 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: The 2021 Writing Competition will take place from Sunday, May 16th to Saturday, May 22nd and will be six days instead of seven. The competition registration form will open in April 2021.

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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Deferral Policy Update: Harvard Law Review will invite students to join Vol. 136 in mid-July. Students invited to join Vol. 136 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. 137 in fall 2022 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. 136 who are taking a fall-semester leave of absence from HLS are encouraged to still join as editors with Vol. 136. If joining with Vol. 136, 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 2022); in that case, they will have no Law Review obligations during the 2021-2022 academic year and will participate as Law Review editors for a single year.

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Competition Application Information

You may download the 2021 competition application information packet here. The attached application information packet is designed to provide some specific guidance about approaching the case comment and subcite portions of the competition. Please note that the sample competition submissions included in this packet are merely representative and are by no means definitive examples.

A video of our April 8 writing competition tips session is also available on our YouTube channel.

Information for Transfer Students

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 is firmly committed to providing accommodations for students with disabilities and handles requests on a case-by-case basis. The Law Review is an independent entity and thus has its own accommodations system separate from Harvard Law School's Dean of Students Office.

To request an accommodation, please complete the accommodation request form. When submitting your request, you will use our Level-4 secure Qualtrics form for all confidential materials. If you have questions or need help submitting, please reach out to Jennifer Heath at [email protected] or 617-495-7889.

Accommodations requests can be submitted between Monday, March 8 and Friday, April 16th 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 about what documentation is needed.

The Law Review strives to keep information regarding disabilities and accommodations as confidential as possible. Nothing about your accommodations application or your receipt of accommodations will be part of the Competition entry that is considered in the selection process. All Competition grading is doubly anonymized. Jennifer Heath, a non-student HLR staff member manages the logistics related to our accommodations process, and accommodations recommendations to the Law Review are made by our testing consultant, Dr. Loring Brinckerhoff.

If you’d like to talk to someone about the accommodations process in particular, please reach out to Jennifer Heath at [email protected] or 617-495-7889. For more information about life on the Review, please reach out to Sarah Sadlier, our Vice President (Coordination, Diversity, & Outreach) at [email protected]

If you’d like to talk to someone about the accommodations process in particular, please reach out to Jennifer Heath at [email protected] or 617-495-7889. For more information about life on the Review, please reach out to Sarah Sadlier, our Vice President (Coordination, Diversity, & Outreach) at [email protected].

Religious Accommodations

Students with unavoidable religious conflicts during the competition, including those observing Shavuot and/or 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.