Derogating legal scholarship has become something of a sport for many, including federal judges. Chief Justice Roberts, for example, recently opined that "because law review articles are not of interest to the bench," he has trouble remembering the last law review article he read.
David Schwartz (Chicago-Kent) and Lee Petherbridge (Loyola-LA) subject the general claim to data. In a series of papers the authors present findings on when an opinion (majority, dissent, or concurrence) cites to legal scholarship in the U.S. Supreme Court, Courts of Appeals, and Federal Circuit. For Supreme Court opinions, the authors find that legal scholarship citations "sharply vary across different types of legal issues." Click here for a quick summary of the papers (and the data sets).
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