“However many times I try to explain the nature and function of law reviews to anyone outside the legal profession,” says Volume 20 editor Bill Lake ’68, “the reaction is sure to be one of skepticism; more often than not, the skepticism is verbal.” And indeed the law review is an anomaly in the academic world, unique both as a professional tool and as an academic institution. Karl Llewellyn called it “unrivaled by anything in the world of intellectual education.”

The overwhelming majority of published scholarship in the legal profession appears in law reviews. The student-run review is among the most esteemed -and useful-of publications for all members of the legal profession-lawyers, legislators and the judiciary. The law review stands alone by its nature in comparison with any other professional or academic institution.

Reviews are wholly student-run, yet the best of them can call upon leading authorities and academicians and on the finest students and scholars for material. They enjoy total faculty support, yet have complete autonomy. In short, they are vital in the legal world without being in any way subservient to it. This calls for inordinately hard work on the part of the reviewer. A law student ordinarily spends at least forty hours a week on his review work, apart from his regular schedule of classes and class assignments. Membership in a review is thus far more than an extracurricular activity; it is virtually a complete education in itself.

Stanford Law Review in 1967-68 is in its twentieth year, a juncture that Editor Lake calls “comfortable old age.” Compared with Harvard’s eighty-one years, Columbia’s sixty-seven years and Yale’s seventy-six years, the Review is hardly old. Yet the term applies well in the sense that Stanford Law Review can take its place with even the oldest reviews in terms of established scholarly reputation, continuity and the prospect of a vigorous future life.

The Review publishes one volume a year, consisting of six issues of about 200 pages each. Distribution is made between November and June. Current circulation is about 1,700, the subscribers including attorneys, judges, law libraries and major law firms, both national and international.

About twenty-five highly ranked students are invited to membership yearly. They return to school in mid-August and begin learning the work of the Review including familiarization with the “Bluebook” of citation rules. The “Bluebook” also contains an overview of the Review as an institution and of the new member’s role as a participant.

Before classes begin in September, the new member has completed for publication, under the guidance of a third-year editor, his comment on a recent development in the law. Within his first year on the Review and after primary editing by a reviser and final editing by one or two recent developments editors, the new member will see his comment in print. In the process, he has become well versed in cite checking, proofreading and manuscript preparation. Later, the student will, in a similar but more demanding process, prepare a case note of substantial length for publication. According to Bill Lake:

Through this process of continual, mutual criticism and evaluation, Review members not only learn to appreciate their own talents and weaknesses, but become capable of making an accurate assessment of the capability and dedication of those with whom they have worked. This familiarity is vital to the selection, each year, of the ten individuals who will become the officers of the Review for the next volume. In early spring, one member of the second-year class is elected by a majority vote of the entire Review to serve as President. The president-elect then selects, with the help of recommendations from the outgoing officers, the officers who will serve as editors and administrators for the next year of the Review.

The student writing that constitutes about half of the contents of each issue is designed to serve a particular function for the legal profession, one made uniquely appropriate by the circumstances in which this writing is produced. It is an exercise in in-depth research, in which the student writer’s mandate is to tap all possible sources of information relevant to his topic-legal library materials, empirical findings, field interviews and surveys, and the literatures and faculties of nonlegal academic disciplines. The written piece thus produced can bring to bear on a legal subject a creativity, a breadth of resources and an amount of time not available to the practicing lawyer or judge.

A special issue on the constitutionality of the 1967 Voting Rights Act, written by ‘Warren Christopher, first president of the Review and current Deputy Attorney General of the United States, started off Volume 18 in September 1965. The June issue was dedicated to Dean Marion Rice Kirkwood. Faculty articles came from Professors Merryman, Hancock, Franklin and Ehrlich. Alumnus Judge Ben. C. Duniway ’23 of the Ninth Circuit, U.S. District Court of Appeals, was also a contributor.

Volume nineteen, a typical volume, published articles on numerous subjects, including enterprise liability, trends in enterprise liability, oligopoly power under the Sherman and Clayton acts, statutory modification of inverse condemnation and cooperative apartment transfer. The Review carried Professor Charles Meyers’ “The Colorado River” and Joseph W. Bartlett’s (’60) “Variable Annuities: Evolution and Analysis.” Student work covered such topics as conflicts of interest and union pension fund investments, gift taxation of interest-free loans, simplified taxable income, community property, and qualification of a specific portion of a trust for marital deductions.

The June issue of Volume 19 was devoted entirely to international law. The Review feels that there is a need for more exposure to the many problems in the broad field of international law and hopes to provide a forum that will serve both practitioners and scholars. The prospect of producing an international issue on an annual basis has been received enthusiastically. The inaugural issue last June contained articles on a wide variety of topics by both scholars and practitioners, as well as student work and book reviews.

The faculty has been vigorous in its support of the Review without in any way exercising control. Students can count on members of the faculty to suggest topics and do critical readings on incoming material that lies within their fields. They can be counted on as well to respect the autonomy of the editors in the selection and preparation of items for publication.

Among the Review’s strong points, according to Volume Nineteen’s article editor, Steven Tennis ’67 is its lack of “set institutional patterns, allowing the Review to respond more readily to felt needs of the legal profession.” The international law issue was an example of such catholicity of interest.

In keeping with the School’s seventy-fifth anniversary celebration during the coming year, the Review will devote issue 3, appearing in February 1968, solely to alumni writings.

On May 6, Professor Charles Meyers acted as master of ceremonies at the Review’s nineteenth annual banquet. The Irving Hellman, Jr. Law Review prizes were awarded to John H. Messing, Raymond F. , Sebastian and Charles Traeger. Certificates of membership on the Board of Editors were presented to third-year members.

Again to quote Karl Llewellyn: Certainly it is impossible that the student-run review, lacking either maturity, or continuity of leadership, could have maintained itself against that competition of experienced faculty editors which has now been in the field for years.

Llewellyn’s words are here meant to underscore the fact that, despite the apparently insoluble problems inherent in their production, student-run reviews have in fact done better than simply maintain themselves in the face of competition; they have prospered. Stanford Law Review is no exception.