Ann Althouse has a recent post praising short law review articles (and judicial opinions). I have to agree. There is an old saying which I will probably butcher, but it goes something like this: “most books should be articles, most articles should be short essays, and most short essays should be footnotes.” I agree with Althouse that most 90+ page law reviews are likely unpublishable books. There are exceptions, of course, but generally if you have something worthwhile to say that truly takes this many pages to say it, then presses should likely find it worthy of publishing. If not, well ….
I have seen (but for some reason can’t find now) performance measures that actually give academics more credit for longer law review articles. This is not something that we want to reward people for doing. One reason I turn to a law review article is that it summarizes and distills a maze of literatures and case readings. Here’s a tip for lengthy article writers – just because you read about something doesn’t mean it has to go into the article. It’s all about the editing. Here’s an excerpt from Althouse’s post:
“[M]y heroes Charles Black and Arthur Allen Leff were known for their interesting short pieces, but the world of law-review writing moved away to massive tomes for a while,” writes Glenn Reynolds, who likes to write short articles (and short blog posts).
Massive tomes… I call them “unpublishable books.” But they are published, as articles, in law reviews, and no one reads them. The shorter an article is, the more likely people will read the whole thing. If it’s long, sane readers will adopt strategies of skipping and skimming.
The same goes for court opinions. How I would love to teach my Constitutional Law classes without making the students buy a casebook. I’d email them a list of links to the great cases, which we’d read carefully and deeply.
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