Jotwell seeks short reviews of (very) recent scholarly work relevant to the law that the reviewer likes and thinks deserves a wide audience. The ideal Jotwell review will not merely celebrate scholarly achievement, but situate it in the context of other scholarship in a manner that explains to both specialists and non-specialists why the work is important.

Although critique is welcome, reviewers should choose the subjects they write about with an eye toward identifying and celebrating work that makes an original contribution, and that will be of interest to others.

Jotwell reviews works in draft, in press, or published not more than two years ago. The one exception is the Classics Section of Jotwell, which is open to reviews of unjustly neglected works that are at least 50 years old.

Reviews need not be written in a particularly formal manner. Contributors should feel free to write in a manner that will be understandable to scholars, practitioners, and even non-lawyers.

Ordinarily a ‘Jot’ will:

• be between 500-1000 words;
• focus on a single work, ideally a recent article, but a discussion of a recent book is also welcome;
• begin with a hyperlink to the original work — in order to make the conversation as inclusive as possible, there is a strong preference for reviews to focus on scholarly works that can be found online without using a subscription service such as Westlaw or Lexis. That said, reviews of articles that are not freely available online, and also of very recent books, are also welcome.

References

Authors are responsible for the content and cite-checking of their own articles. Jotwell editors and staff may make editorial suggestions, and may alter the formatting to conform to the house style, but the author remains the final authority on content appearing under his or her name.

• Please keep citations to a minimum.
• Please include a hyperlink, if possible, to any works referenced.
• Textual citations are preferred. Endnotes, with hyperlinks, are allowed if your HTML skills extend that far.
• Authors are welcome to follow The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18th ed. 2005), or the The Redbook: A Manual on Legal Style (2d Ed.) or indeed to adopt any other citation form which makes it easy to find the work cited.

Technical

Jotwell publishes in HTML, which is a very simple text format and which does not lend itself to footnotes. If you are not comfortable with HTML, just draft the article in your favorite word processor and Jotwell’s staff will convert it for you.

Please Note

Authors should please disclose any relevant personal or professional relationships (beyond ordinary social or professional contacts) with the person whose work is being reviewed. Illustrative examples of relationships we’d like to know about include former student, currently on the same faculty, former co-author or editor.