Online Essay Submissions

SUBMISSIONS CLOSED

The Stanford Law Review Online is currently closed for submissions with the exception of student Comments. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at online@stanfordlawreview.org.

Comment Submission Form

Stanford Law Review Online submissions should be original pieces of timely legal scholarship written to be accessible to a wide audience. Our general ethics policy also applies to Stanford Law Review Online submissions.

V79 Special Collection

For any questions regarding the special collection, please contact the Editor-in-Chief for SLRO Volume 79, Hannah Dahleen, at online@stanfordlawreview.org.

AI Policy

In accordance with our AI Policy, we require that authors disclose any use of generative AI that has significantly affected the substance, originality, or reliability of the submission. Regardless of whether you used generative AI in the creation of your piece, please fill out the following form.

Submission Length

We have a strong preference for submissions less than 5,000 words (including footnotes). Submissions exceeding 10,000 words will be automatically rejected.

Format

Please submit an editable word processing document (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .otf, etc.). PDF submissions will not be accepted.

Style

The submission’s text and citations should conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (22d ed. 2025), copyrighted by the Columbia Law Review Association, the Harvard Law Review Association, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal.

We encourage concise and targeted footnoting; an essay of 3,000 words typically has about 30 footnotes. Footnotes are required for (1) direct quotations, language, or ideas from sources; (2) references to primary materials, such as cases, statutes, or news articles; and (3) obscure materials that may be difficult for readers to find. An example of the appropriate level of footnoting can be found here.

Anonymized Review

It is our policy to apply the same standards of review to all submissions, and to judge pieces based solely on their content. Our review process is fully anonymized; all voting Online Editors review submissions and select essays without knowledge of the author’s identity, institutional affiliation, or any other biographical information. Only the Online Editor-in-Chief and Online Executive Editor have access to this information.

To preserve the anonymized review process, all submission files must be anonymized. Before submitting, please remove all identifying information, including the author’s name, institution, and any acknowledgements. Please consult the following links for information on how to remove identifying information, including metadata, from Microsoft Word documents: Word 2007, Word 2010, Word 2013, and Word 2016.

Authors should include their name and identifying information only in the designated fields in the form below and may include them on their cover letter/CV.

Other Issues

Further questions about the submission process should be addressed to Hannah Dahleen, Online Editor-in-Chief for Volume 79, at online@stanfordlawreview.org.

ONLINE ESSAY SUBMISSION

Online essays can be submitted on the Stanford Law Review Online Scholastica portal or using the SLRO website form, which you can find below when SLRO is accepting submissions. Please submit your essay on only one platform. Submissions to the SLRO website will be uploaded to Scholastica, which will also be used to send all decision notifications. Submissions sent via email will not be considered.

Submit to Stanford Law Review Online

STUDENT COMMENTS

Please submit all Comments to the Submission Portal.

A Comment is a concise, focused piece of student writing that offers original analysis of a recent case or other development in the law or legal scholarship. We encourage any students whose main subject is a critique/analysis of a case, an analysis of a new piece of legislation, a response to a law journal article, or a review of a law-related book to submit their work as a Comment rather than as a Note. The word limit for Comments is 7,500.

All submissions to SLRO, including Comments, are reviewed, accepted, and edited on a rolling basis. SLRO will accept Comment submissions on a rolling basis until November 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM PT. Given SLRO’s condensed editing and review timeline, submissions will be reviewed not only based on the substantive quality of the piece but also its readiness for publication.

The Stanford Law Review accepts Comments only from current Stanford Law School students and Stanford students who graduated within the past year (Class of 2026 graduates may submit until the end of August 2026). The Stanford Law Review does not accept submissions from students at other law schools. Co-authored submissions must have at least one Stanford Law School student co-author; non-SLS co-authors must be current Stanford graduate students.

All submissions are considered and evaluated by the Online Committee without any identifying information. Therefore, all identifying information, including the author’s name, any acknowledgments, and metadata, must be removed prior to submission. While the submission form asks for demographic data, that data is not used during the evaluation process. Further, authors should take care not to discuss their work with any members of the Online Committee.

Please consult the following links for information on how to remove identifying information, including metadata, from Microsoft Word documents: Word 2010, Word 2013, and more current versions of Word.

Please use 12-point Times New Roman font and double space the text of your Comment. For footnotes, use 10-point Times New Roman font and single spacing. The Comment should use 1-inch margins and include page numbers in the bottom-right corner of the page. All submissions must be in Microsoft Word.

All Comments must contain a Statement of Originality detailing how the argument being advanced fits into the current literature. It should be clear from the Statement how your argument differs from those of other authors. The Statement should also provide information about the published scholarship that underlies or inspired the piece, the names of professors who would be well-suited to review the submission (they need not be at Stanford), and the names of professors who are already familiar with the piece and its authorship. For co-authored pieces, please briefly address how each co-author contributed to your submission. The Statement of Originality should be inserted at the front of the submission, as a cover page.

Further questions about the submission process should be addressed to Hannah Dahleen, Online Editor-in-Chief for Volume 79, at online@stanfordlawreview.org.