The Stanford Law Review is no longer accepting submissions for publication in Volume 65. We will begin accepting submissions for publication in Volume 66 in February 2013.
Submission Requirements
For your reference, our submission requirements are described below.
Electronic Submissions
The Stanford Law Review evaluates only article manuscripts submitted using the form below. Articles cannot be submitted to the Stanford Law Review through ExpressO or any other electronic service. Paper submissions are also no longer reviewed. Please use the form below to submit a manuscript for consideration. [To instead submit an Essay for potential publication in the Stanford Law Review Online, visit the online essays submission page.]
Manuscript Specifications
Please do not include your name or other identifying information on your manuscript itself. Instead, enter your name and identifying information in the designated form fields when you upload your article onto the Stanford Law Review website. Any special requests or instructions should be entered in the "Notes" field.
Please include a brief abstract of your submission with the text. Resumes and biographical information are not required.
The text and citations of the Review generally conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (19th ed. 2010), copyright by the Columbia Law Review Association, the Harvard Law Review Association, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal.
Article Length
The Stanford Law Review has a word limit of 30,000 words (including footnotes), and a preference for 25,000 words or fewer. We particularly value brevity so look favorably on pieces that are significantly below the 30,000-word ceiling. The Stanford Law Review is among the 15 leading law reviews joining the statement below:
"In mid-December [2004], the Harvard Law Review conducted a nationwide survey of law faculty regarding the state of legal scholarship. Nearly 800 professors completed the survey and submitted their feedback. Complete tabulations of the survey will soon be available on the web. Importantly, the survey documented one particularly unambiguous view shared by faculty and law review editors alike: the length of articles has become excessive. In fact, nearly 90% of faculty agreed that articles are too long. In addition, dozens of respondents submitted specific comments, identifying the dangers of this trend and calling for action. Survey respondents suggested that shorter articles would enhance the quality of legal scholarship, shorten and improve the editing process, and render articles more effective and easier to read. The law reviews [that join this statement] are very grateful for the constructive feedback and wish to acknowledge a role in contributing to this unfortunate trend in legal scholarship. To the extent that the article selection or editing process encourages the submission and publication of lengthier articles, each of the law reviews listed above is committed to rethinking and modifying its policies as necessary. Indeed, some have already done so. The vast majority of law review articles can effectively convey their arguments within the range of 40-70 pages, and any impression that law reviews only publish or strongly prefer lengthier articles should be dispelled. Ultimately, individual law reviews will have to decide for themselves how best to resolve these concerns. Please know, however, that editors across the country are cognizant of the troubling trend toward longer articles and are actively exploring how to address it."
Ethics Policy
In the past few decades, legal scholarship has increased in sophistication, depth, scale, and volume. While the Bluebook rigorously governs methods of citation, law reviews have generally lagged in adopting similar standards for documentation of empirical data, the most important source in empirical works. Similarly, law reviews have been unique in failing to articulate basic ethics standards. These failures threaten the validity, credibility, prestige and potential of student-run law reviews. To address these concerns, the Stanford Law Review henceforth conditions its acceptance of articles upon satisfaction of the following requirements.
(I) Replication Policy: At a minimum, empirical works must document and archive all datasets so that third parties may replicate the published findings. These datasets will be published on our website. The Law Review will make narrow exceptions on a case-by-case basis, particularly if the datasets involve issues of confidentiality and/or privacy. (II) Peer Review: Peer review not only enhances an article’s quality, but guarantees originality. Submissions will be subject to peer review, albeit in a form amenable to the typical law review selection timeframes. (III) Conflict of Interest: All authors must disclose any conflict of interest. This includes any financial interest that may be affected by the results or conclusions in the submission. This also includes any source of outside funding for the submission that may have affected or biased the assumptions, results or conclusions in the submission – e.g., any payment received by an outside organization to complete the work. If the funding helped pay for the expenses associated with a project (travel, data compilation, simulations, etc), we simply ask that the connection be noted and the organization thanked. IMPORTANT: We do not, however, publish pieces for which the author was paid taxable income by an organization other than the relevant employer – i.e., income from an outside organization or corporation that simply went to the author, rather than funding the expenses of a project.
