Boalt Hall Student Submissions

Thank you for your interest in submitting your student comment to the Notes & Comments Department of the California Law Review to be considered for publication. In each annual volume, CLR publishes approximately fifteen (15) student comments.

We strongly encourage eligible students to submit their comments to be considered for one of these publication slots. If you have any questions about the submissions process after reviewing the information on this page, please do not hesitate to contact CLR’s Administrator, Maro Vidal-Manou, or CLR’s Senior Notes & Comments Editor, Jesse Solomon.

Who is eligible to submit student comments?

The California Law Review invites students at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) to submit their comments to be reviewed for publication. Non-Boalt Hall students who wish to submit their comments to the California Law Review must submit to the Articles Department, not to the Notes & Comments Department.

As discussed in greater detail below, both CLR members and non-members are subject to certain eligibility restrictions regarding the dates within which they may submit their comments to be considered for publication.

How can student authors submit their comments?

Students who wish to submit their comments should submit their comments to CLR’s Administrator, Maro Vidal-Manou, in Simon Hall Room 592. Please submit an envelope with:

(a) Five (5) anonymous copies of your comment, each including the title of the comment, an abstract of the comment, and the comment text double-spaced; and

(b) One (1) cover sheet with the following information:
i. The title of your piece
ii. Your contact information (telephone, email, address)
iii. CLR member or non-member status
iv. The date and result of your last preemption check

Because of the strictly anonymous process that Notes & Comments uses to select student comments for publication, please do not include any information on your comment that would explicitly or implicitly identify you. For the same reason, submitting authors are prohibited from inquiring into the status of their comments of any Notes & Comments Editor and may only communicate with CLR’s Administrator.

When can students submit their comments?

CLR members may begin submitting their comments to be considered for publication on the March 1 of their 2L year. CLR members may submit their comments to the Notes & Comments Department until the January 1 of the year after they graduate (approximately six months following graduation).

Boalt Hall students who are not currently CLR members may begin submitting their comments to be considered for publication on the March 1 of their 2L year. Non-member Boalt Hall students may submit their comments to the Notes & Comments Department until the September 1 of the year they graduate (approximately three months following graduation).

Boalt Hall students wishing to submit their student comments to CLR outside of their eligibility dates must submit their comments to the Articles Department.

Can a Boalt student who is not a California Law Review member become a member if her comment is selected for publication?

Non-member student authors who are “publishing on” to CLR may become members of CLR so long as: (a) those authors submit their pieces by October 31 in the fall semester of their 3L years; (b) those authors are selected for publication by the March 1 of their 3L years; and (c) those authors fulfill the adjusted member work requirements as determined by the Managing Editor and relevant CLR personnel.

What student-written pieces does the California Law Review publish?

Contrary to the name of the Notes & Comments Department but in accordance with the dominant practice among law reviews, CLR does not publish student casenotes but selects only student comments for publication.

A “comment” is an academic analysis of a legal issue, debate, or problem. A comment’s classical format is a three-part structure in which the author will provide background for the analysis, the analysis itself, and then a legal or policy recommendation as to how to resolve the legal issue. A comment can comprise many different kinds of pieces, so long as they are somehow “legal” in nature (though we do welcome interdisciplinary pieces). For example, a comment could address a circuit split on an interpretation of a rule or a statute, or it could reference a recent political or legal debate and explore the implications and concerns around that debate. It could discuss novel legal theories for resolving social problems, or it could address the nature of legal education or legal institutions. Pieces may be geared toward theoretical legal philosophy or pragmatic, on-the-ground lawyering. CLR has chosen to set loose parameters on what counts as a sufficiently “legal” comment. The comments Notes & Comments selects for publication are, in general, 40-60 page papers which provide in-depth analyses of political and legal issues or legal scholarship. While many of the comments that we review are written through writing seminars or independent studies with professors, Boalt students may submit any paper to be considered for publication so long as it has a sufficiently legal focus.

While CLR does select student comments, it does not as a matter of course select casenotes for publication. A “casenote” is a particular form of legal writing which analyzes the background and implications of one (usually recent) landmark decision. Each year, CLR selects a recent Supreme Court decision as the basis of a casenote which students must write for the write-on competition. Casenotes tend to be shorter and more confined in their analyses than comments because they focus their discussions solely around single cases rather than bodies of laws. Casenotes are, in general, very rarely published by law reviews, and CLR has for some time elected not to publish casenotes.

CLR will not publish any comment that has been selected for publication by any other law review, journal, or magazine. Authors should under no circumstance submit comments to CLR that have already been accepted by another publication.

How does the review process work for student comments?

Notes & Comments employs an anonymous, consensus-based system for determining the student comments that will be selected for publication. We recognize that we have a responsibility to ensure that student authors should receive neutral, unbiased, and fair consideration of their pieces, without political or personal considerations infecting the slotting process. As a result, the Notes & Comments Department employs a very strict anonymous process whereby no Notes & Comments Editor knows the identities of the authors being considered—and only those authors selected for publication are “identified” at the time of selection. Notes & Comments Editors may inadvertently discover the identities of authors during the review process, but they are expressly prohibited from using the author’s identity as a factor weighing for or against publication. If a Notes & Comments Editor becomes aware of an author’s identity and that awareness creates a real or perceived conflict of interest, that editor will recuse himself or herself from consideration of that piece.

What criteria does the Notes & Comments Department use in selecting student comments for publication?

Notes & Comments considers the merits of the individual comments as well as other broader concerns, such as the department’s ability to publish comments that are best suited to the CLR publication process and that allow the department to publish on a wide range of legal fields and critical methodologies. As a result, if we have recently selected three international law pieces for publication, we may hold on a fourth so that we may have a breadth of scholarship. As to the merits of the pieces themselves, we tend to select pieces that are extremely well-researched; pieces that have a tight, focused topic; pieces that are careful to provide balanced analysis with arguments and counterarguments, without conclusory claims; and pieces that are written in a clear, engaging manner that would be appropriate for the broad-based readership of a general law review. We do not select comments on the basis for our own individual legal passions or our individual political orientations.

When and how are students notified of decisions on their pieces?

Because Notes & Comments has slotting deadlines throughout the year and reviews comments on a rolling basis, the length of time for students to receive notification can vary wildly. We strive to notify students of some determination within several months of an initial submission, and we send out those notifications via post and via email.

Periodically throughout the year, CLR sends out letters to those authors who have not yet been selected for publication. Those letters inform authors that Notes & Comments either declines to publish their pieces, that Notes & Comments encourages the authors to make specific revisions to their pieces and resubmit them, or that Notes & Comments is still considering their pieces and that the pieces are being “held” pending decision. Throughout, this is an anonymous process and Notes & Comments Editors do not know the identities of their authors, and consequently the Notes & Comments Department will not respond to inquiries about or invitations to discuss individual pieces.

Thank you. We look forward to reading your work!

The 2007-2008 Notes & Comments Department
Jesse Solomon, Senior Notes & Comments Editor
Mojgone Azemun, Notes & Comments Editor
Angela Hollowell-Fuentes, Notes & Comments Editor
Monique Liburd, Notes & Comments Editor