One of the most interesting findings of Nance and Steinberg's paper is the weight that student law review editors give to an author's credentials in deciding whether to publish an article. However, I suspect that the effect of the author's credentials is more complicated than suggested by their paper.
I've heard from some editors at good, although not top tier, law reviews that they generally will not give publication offers to very elite authors because such authors are very unlikely to accept an offer of publication at their law reviews. This is reasonable behavior by the editors; the law review staff's time is better spent examining articles that they have a fair chance of getting to publish. This behavior also parallels that of authors who don't bother to submit some of their articles to top law reviews with atypical submission requirements because complying with the requirements isn't worth the effort in light of the very low probability that the law review will accept the paper. Thus, at least for non-elite law reviews, the relationship between an author's credentials and the probability of an article being accepted may not be linear. Higher author credentials may improve the chance of having the article accepted up to a point, but past that point, it may actually reduce the likelihood of acceptance.
Another area of inquiry that would have been especially interesting for the readers of this blog is whether law reviews use different criteria in reviewing empirical articles than they do for other types of articles. I have heard (again only anecdotally) that student-edited law reviews are increasingly interested in publishing empirical research. However, law students are probably less able to judge the quality of empirical work -- especially that involving statistical analyses -- than the quality of other articles. Thus, assuming law review editors are aware of their own limitations, they may be even more likely to rely on the author's credentials in deciding whether to publish empirical articles.
"However, law students are probably less able to judge the quality of empirical work -- especially that involving statistical analyses -- than the quality of other articles."
If you keep making statements like that, you will never get published. Law students are as likely to understand statistics as anyone. In fact more are from science and econ. backgrounds these days vs. when many professors went through. They are also have good memories for people who underestimate their competence in print. :)
Posted by: Corey | 08 October 2007 at 11:35 AM