The sordid details are here; unlike the Harvard Law Review, however, this journal, Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, is not the flagship, student-edited journal at the school. Still, as biochemist Frank Schmidt (Missouri), who brought this to my attention, aptly remarked:
I wonder about such student-edited journals. In my field, journal
editorship is almost always a signal honor, reserved for accomplished
scientists who are rewarded for their accomplishment by getting more
work to do at minimal or no pay. And all of us review articles gratis,
as a service to the community. As a result, an article based on an
incorrect premise would not be published in a "good journal." Not that
we don't have problems with fraud, etc., but the system works remarkably
well.
On the other hand, an article based on the fatuous claim "Intelligent
Design is a scientific research program teaching that intelligent agency
explains more about complex biological systems than does evolutionary
theory," is published in a journal bearing the name of a distinguished
university, and becomes part of the field's discourse.
Is this a systemic problem in law journals? And does the academy as a
whole need to address it?
There is clearly a systematic problem, as we've discussed previously. But those in other fields need to be aware that anything can be published somewhere in a student-edited journal, because there are so damn many of them and most of them are desperate for material (and most of them are edited by individuals ill-equipped to evaluate most of the articles they receive, especially those that require knowledge of other scholarly disciplines). Why are there so many? Primarily because their main purpose is for training, educating and (often) credentialing students ("Were you on a journal?"), and not because there is a need in the wider community for yet another forum for purportedly scholarly articles on legal topics.
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