I'm delighted to report that the Journal of Legal Education has issued a call for book reviews and book review proposals. Cribbing now from their proposal:
The Journal of Legal Educaiton (JLE) believes that review essays constitute an important means of communicating scholarly ideas and are particularly well-suited to facilitating dialogue and engagement within and among the legal scholarly community. Accordingly, the JLE has adopted a policy of dedicating space in all of its print issues to the publication of timely reviews of books related to the law (broadly defined). Although the JLE’s editors generally prefer to review complete drafts of proposed review essays, would-be authors are also welcome to submit book review proposals. Review essay proposals should, in a clear and concise manner, address (1) the reasons the book at issue merits a published review (including its general importance and the relevance/novelty of its contribution to the relevant field), (2) the proposer’s suitability for authoring a review (including specifically familiarity or knowledge of the relevant field of law, as well as prior scholarly publications in the field), (3) the main argument or arguments that the reviewer would advance in the review essay, and(4) whether other reviews of the book already have been published, and if, so, why the proposed review would add something important and new. There is no deadline for submissions of review essay manuscripts and proposals. All submissions will be considered on a rolling basis for possible publication in the JLE.. Manuscripts and review proposals should be submitted to either Professor Margaret Woo at m.woo@neu.edu or Dean Jeremy Paul at j.paul@neu.edu, the co-editors of the JLE.
Their full call for review essays is here. I've been pleased to see that over the past few years the JLE has increased the reviews they're publishing. We all too rarely take the opportunity to assess recent monographs and over the past decade or so, many law reviews have stopped publishing essay reviews. So I am very excited by this project. I want to add that I'm delighted to have an essay review of Kirt von Daacke's very important new book Freedom Has A Face in the JLE. Kirt's book, which is part of a wholesale reassessment of free people of African descent in the slave-owning south, speaks the nature of the rule of law in the old south. When that essay review appears I'll talk a lot more about Kirt's book and how it is propelling more research.