Legal Theory Blog

Legal Theory CalendarMonday, March 1

Legal Theory Calendar

Monday, March 1
At Columbia's law and economics series, Lee Anne Fennell (Texas) presents Common Interest Tragedies. This should be good!
At NYU, Paul Chevigny presents Social Dancing and Social Association.
At George Mason's Philosophy, Politics, & Economics series, Christopher Mantzavinos, Research Group in Collective Goods, Max Planck Institute, presents Naturalistic Hermeneutics.
At the University of Chicago's law and philosophy series, Emily Buss, University of Chicago Law School, was tentatively schedule to present The Relationship Between Procreative and Parental Rights. Does anyone know if this is still on?
At Loyola Marymount, Mark V. Tushnet, Georgetown, presents Social Welfare Rights and the Forms of Judicial Review.
At Oxford's Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Heather Douglas presents Black skins and white hearts: Assimilation policy in Australia and the 1950`s justice of Kriewaldt.
At UCLA, Paul Zak, Claremont Graduate University, presents The Neurobiology of Trust.
At Oxford's Moral Philosophy Seminar, Elijah Millgram (Utah) presents Reasonably Virtuous.
Tuesday, March 2
At the University of Chicago's political theory workshop, Luis Medina, University of Chicago, presents Who Is Afraid of Collective Intentionality?
At Chicago's Olin series, Suzanne Scotchmer, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, presents Procuring Knowledge, coauthored with Stephen M. Maurer.
At Oxford's Jurisprudence Discussion Group, Shlomit Wallerstein, presents Justifying the Right of Self Defence: The Problem of Self Preference.
At Oxford's Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics, Jonathan Glover (KCL) presents What We Owe to Our Children.
Wednesday, March 3
At the University of London's famous Colloquium in Legal and Social Philosophy, Nigel Simmonds (Corpus Christi, Cambridge) presents Law as a Moral Idea.
At Northwestern's constitutional law series, Jed Rubenfeld, Yale University Law School, presents The Structure of American Constitutional Law.
At Oxford, Lady Justice Arden presents the Halsbury Annual Lecture: Terrorism and Human Rights.
At Oxford's Environmental Law Discussion Group, Xabier Ezeizabarrena presents The `Prestige` shipwreck: Some limits of international environmental law.
At NYU's legal history series, Williamjames Hoffer, History, Seton Hall, presents Leviathan Bound: Lawyers, Congress, and the Building of the U.S. State, 1858-1891.
Thursday, March 4
At Florida State, Bill Page, University of Florida, presents Economic Authority and the Limits of Expertise in Antitrust Cases. Contrary to my report, FSU has not forgotten about leap year. Instead, I forgot it was March!!!
At Yale's Legal Theory Workshop, Alex Aleinikoff, Georgetown (Law) presents The Constitution And the Challenge of Transnational Law.
At Princeton's Political Philosophy Colloquium, Jeff McMahan, Rutgers, presents Unjust War.
At Stanford's Olin Series, Ian Ayres (Yale Law School) presents To Insure Prejudice: Racial Disparities in Taxicab Tipping
At Berkeley's GALA series, Peter Westen, University of Michigan Law School, presents Some Common Confusions About Consent in Rape Cases.
At the University of Texas's Constitutional & Legal Theory Colloquium, Richard Primus (University of Michigan) presents Bolling Alone.
At Boson University, Jim Lindgren is speaking.
At George Mason, D. Bruce Johnsen, GMU School of Law, presents The Politicization of American Savings.
At U.C. Berkeley's philosophy series, Julia Annas, University of Arizona, presents Virtue Ethics and Social Psychology.
At Australian National University's RSSS, Luke Russell (University of Sydney) presents Developmental Systems Theory and the Evolution of Moral Behaviour.
At UCLA's legal theory series, Deborah Hellman is speaking, but I do not have a title.
Friday, March 5
At the University of San Diego, Randy Barnett presents The Presumption of Liberty. I am looking forward to this! At Michigan's law and economics series, Vicki Been presents Lucas v. The Green Machine: Using the Takings Clause to Promote More Efficient Regulation?.
At UCLA's tax policy series, David Schizer, Columbia Law School, presents Inconsistencies, Imbalances, and the Taxation of Derivative Securities: An Agenda for Reform.
At MIT's philosophy series, Elisabeth Lloyd, Indiana University, presents How Should We Understand Bias in Scientific Explanations?.
At Oxford's Faculty of Law, Michael Rowe presents Vertical Agreements – Freezer Exclusivity.
At Oxford's Human Rights Discussion Group, Liora Lazarus presents Prisoners` Rights in England and Germany.
At Oxford's Institute of European and Comparative Law, Chris Hilson presents What’s in a Right? The Relationship Between Community, Fundamental and Citizenship Rights in EU Law.
At UCLA, Owen Jones (ASU) presents Law and Behavioral Biology.
At Tulane's Center for Ethics and Public Affairs, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, presents Normative Concepts.
At Princeton's philosophy department, Michael Strevens, Stanford University, presents Why Explanations Lie: An Account of Idealization in Explanation.
At the Society for Applied for Philosophy in London, there will be a program on International Justice: Theory and Practice with Miltos Ladikos (Lancaster) & Katrin Filkschuh (LSE) as speakers and Doris Schroeder (Central Lancashire) as chair.

Legal Theory Lexicon: Social Welfare

Legal Theory Lexicon: Social Welfare Functions

Introduction One of the key ideas in contemporary economic theory in general and law and economics in particular is the social welfare function. Law students without a background in economics might be put off by the fact that social welfare functions are expressed in mathematical notation, but there is no reason to be intimidated. The basic ideas are easily grasped and the mathematical notation can be mastered in just a few minutes. This post provided an introduction to the idea of the social welfare function for law students, especially first year law students, with an interest in legal theory. Here we go!
Background
Normative Economics The idea of a social welfare function is part of normative economics. There are several plausible formulations of normative economics, but almost all of normative economics begins with the fundamental idea of utility as a conception or measure of the good. Economists may disagree about the nature of utility, the relationship of utility to social welfare, and the role of welfare in public policy, but most (if not all) economists would assent to the abstract proposition that ceteris paribus more utility is a good thing. But this apparent agreement is at a very abstract and ambiguous level. There are many different ideas about what "utility" is.
Cardinal and Ordinal Interpretations of Utility One key divide is between cardinal and ordinal interpretations of utility. An ordinal utility function for an individual consists of a rank ordering of possible states of affairs for that individual. An ordinal function tells us that individual i prefers possible world X to possible world Y, but it doesn't tell us whether X is much better than Y or only a little better. A cardinal utility function yields a real-number value for each possible state of affairs. If we assume that utility functions yield values expressed in units of utility or utiles, then individual's utility function might score possible world P at 80 utiles and possible world Q at 120 utiles. We might represent the utility function U of individual i for P and Q as follows:
Ui(P) = 80 Ui(Q) = 120
The distinction between cardinal and ordinal utilities is potentially important for utilitarianism, at least on certain interpretations. As a theory of evaluation, utilitarianism is the view that an action is the best action if and only if the action maximizes utility when compared with all possible alternative actions. For technical reasons, utilitarianism requires both cardinality and full interpersonal comparability. This point about utilitarianism is closely related to the history of welfare economics, the explicitly normative branch of economic theory.
Measurement Problems Both cardinality and interpersonal comparability pose measurement problems for economists. Even in the base of a single individual, it is difficult to reliability measure cardinal utilities. Measurements that support interpersonal comparisons are even more difficult to justify, and cardinal interpersonal comparisons seem to require the analyst (the person making the comparison) to make a variety of controversial value judgments. Market prices won't do as a proxy for utility, for a variety of reasons including wealth effects. The challenge for welfare economics was to develop a methodology that yields robust evaluations but does not require the cardinal interpersonally comparable utilities.
Pareto This is the point at which Pareto arrives on the scene. Suppose that all the information we have about individual utilities is ordinal and non-interpersonally comparable. In other words, each individual can rank order states of affairs, but we (the analysts) cannot compare the rank orderings across persons. The weak Pareto principle suggests that possible world (state of affairs) P is socially preferable to possible world (state of affairs) Q, if everyone's ordinal ranking of P is higher than their ranking of Q. Weak Pareto doesn't get us very far, because such unanimity of preferences among all persons is rare. The strong Pareto principle suggests that possible world (state of affairs) P is socially preferable to possible world (state of affairs) Q, if at least one person ranks P higher than Q and no one ranks Q higher than P. Unlike weak Pareto, strong Pareto does permit some relatively robust conclusions.
The New Welfare Economics The so-called new welfare economics was based on the insight that market transactions without externalities satisfy strong Pareto. If the only difference between state P and state Q is that in P, individuals i1 and i2 engage in an exchange (money for widgets, chickens for shoes) where both prefer the result of the exchange, then the exchange is Pareto efficient. A state of affairs where no further Pareto efficient moves (or trades) are possible is called Pareto optimal. The assumption about externalities is, of course, crucial. If there are negative externalities of any sort, then the trade is not Pareto efficient.
Weak Pareto and the Arrow Impossibility Theorem Weak Pareto plus ordinal utility information allows some social states (or possible worlds) to be ranked on the basis of everyone's preferences. A method for transforming individual utility information into such a social ranking is called a social utility function. Kenneth Arrow's famous impossibility theorem demonstrates that it is impossible to construct a social utility function that can transform individual ordinal rankings into a social ranking in cases not covered by weak Pareto, if certain plausible assumptions are made. Arrow's theorem has spurred two lines of development in welfare economics. One line of development relaxes various assumptions that Arrow made; for example, we might relax Arrow's assumption that the social ranking must be transitive (if X is preferred to Y and Y is preferred to Z, then X must be preferred to Z). The other line of development considers the possibility of allowing information other than individual, noncomparable ordinal utilities. It is this second line of development that is relevant to the use of social welfare functions in contemporary law and economics.
Social Welfare Functions Suppose that we allow full interpersonal comparability and cardinal utility information. This is sufficient to support what are called Bergson-Samuelson utility functions, which have the form:
W(x) = F (U1(x), U2(x), . . . UN(x))
Where
W(x) represents a real number social utility value for some state of affairs (or possible world) X,
F is some increasing function that yields a real number,
U1(x) is a cardinal, interpersonally comparable utility value yielded by some procedure for individual 1 for state of affairs X, and
N is the total number of individuals.
Bergson-Samuelson social welfare functions are named after Paul Samuelson and Avram Bergson.
What Are the Plausible Social Welfare Functions? There are a variety of different possible functions that can be substituted for F. Here are some of the most important possibilities:
Classical-utilitarian SWF--We could substitute summation for F, and simply add the individual utility values; this is sometimes called a Benthamite or classical-utilitarian social welfare function famously associated with Jeremy Bentham. The classical utility social welfare function can be represented as follows:
W(x)={U1(x) + U2(x) + U(3(x) . . . Un(x)}
Average-utilitarian SWF--The classical SWF adds the utilities. This raises some very interesting issues when the different states of the world (x or y) have different population sizes. When deciding whether to add additional individuals, the classical-utilitarian SWF says more is better until we reach the point where adding more actually reduces the overall level of utility. One way to avoid this implication is use the average level of utility instead of the sum, as in the following formula:
W(s){[U1(x) + U2(x) + U(3(x) . . . Un(x)]/n}
In other words, we divide the sum of utilities by the number of individuals!
Bernoulli-Nash SWF--In the alternative, we could substitute the product function (¡Ç) and multiply individual utilities. This is sometimes called a Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function, which can be represented as follows:
W(x)={U1(x) * U2(x) * U(3(x) . . . Un(x)}
Rather than adding individual utilities, we multiply them! And yes, the "Nash" in Bernoulli-Nash is John Nash of "A Beautiful Mind" fame.
What About the Problem of Interpersonal Comparison? Social welfare functions are much discussed in legal theory these days. One of the reasons for the contemporary debate over social welfare functions is that this approach has been championed by Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell (both of the Harvard Law School). Their book, Welfare versus Fairness, has put the welfarist approach to normative economics "front and center."
One of the interesting theoretical questons about SWFs concerns the problem of interpersonal comparison. How do we get the values to plug into U1(x), U2(x), and so forth. That is, how do we compare up with a way of putting my utility and your utility on the same scale. As I understand the state of play, this is not a topic on which economists agree. Some economists believe that there is no objective way of producing interpersonally comparable cardinal utility values. But some economists believe that a third-party (the legal analyst or the economist) can do the job of assigning values to individual utilities.
Conclusion We've barely begun to scratch the surface of the many interesting theoretical issues that attend the use of social welfare functions in legal theory. Some of those issues were explored in a prior Legal Theory Lexicon entry on Balancing Tests. Even if you have absolutely no background in economics, there is no reason to shy away from the debates about social welfare functions. The notation, although at first intimidating, is actually very simple. The foundational ideas, although sometimes articulated in the jargon of economic theory, really go to fundamental questions in moral theory. I hope this post has given you the tools to begin to discuss these ideas!

For a complete collection of the Legal Theory Lexicon posts, surf here.

Legal Theory Bookworm Today I've

Legal Theory Bookworm Today I've been dipping into Alan Wertheimer's Consent to Sexual Relations, a tiltle in the fine series, "Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law," edited by Gerald Postema. One of the really wonderful things about this book is its use of hypotheticals, complete with a very useful "Appendix," which lays them all out. Here is a description of the book:

When does a woman give valid consent to sexual relations? When does her consent render it morally or legally permissible for a man to have sexual relations with her? Why is sexual consent generally regarded as an issue about female consent? And what is the moral significance of consent? These are some of the questions discussed in this important book, which will appeal to a wide readership in philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Alan Wertheimer develops a theory of consent to sexual relations that applies to both law and morality in the light of the psychology of sexual relations, the psychology of perpetrators, and the psychology of the victims. He considers a wide variety of difficult cases such as coercion, fraud, retardation, and intoxication. We can all agree that ‘no’ means ‘no’. This book suggests that the difficult question is whether ‘yes’ means ‘yes’.

If you are interested in the law of rape or the theory of consent, you will want this book!

Download of the Week This

Download of the Week This week, the Download of the Week is Ex Ante versus Ex Post Justifications for Intellectual Property by Mark Lemley. Lemley's work has had a huge impact on American intellectual propertylaw, and this paper is an important statement on the foundations of IP theory. Here is the abstract:

The traditional theory of IP is that the prospect of future reward provides an ex ante incentive to innovate. An increasingly common justification for longer and more powerful IP rights is ex post - that IP will be "managed" most efficiently if control is consolidated in a single owner. This argument is made, for example, in the prospect and rent dissipation literature in patent law, in justifications for expansive rights of publicity, and in defense of the Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Taken to an extreme, this argument justifies perpetual protection with no real exceptions. Those who rely on this theory take the idea of IP as "property" too seriously, and reason that since individual pieces of property are perpetually managed, IP should be too. But IP isn’t just like real property; indeed, it gives IP owners control over what others do with their real property. The ex post justification is strikingly anti-market. We would never say today that the market for paper clips would be "efficiently managed" if put into the hands of a single firm. We rely on competition to do that for us. But that is exactly what the ex post theory would do.

In this paper, I explore the sub rosa development of this ex post theory of IP. I argue that the basis for continued control is the assumption that the value of IP rights will be dissipated if they are used too much. This argument is fundamentally at odds with the public goods nature of information. It stems from a particular sort of myopia about private ordering, in which actions by individual private firms are presumed to be ideal and the traditional role of the market in disciplining errant firms is ignored.

Download it while its hot!

And with a certain immodesty, I should also like to recommend my own paper, Procedural Justice, which articulates and defends a general theory of fairness for civil and administrative adjudication.

Brighouse on Teaching Political Philisophy

Brighouse on Teaching Political Philisophy "Right" Check out this post by Harry Brighouse:

Do we have an obligation to cover conceptual space and/or the space of public discourse in a course in a philosophy department? Teachers of metaphysics and epistemology are bound by neither obligation, and a good thing too. It?s a fair complaint that we teach Nozick. I stopped doing it when I found my impatience with him getting the better of me. ASU has always struck me as a bit slapdash ? and the best philosophy in it has little to do with his defence of his political philosophy. Fortunately, there are much more powerful and philosophically thorough defenses of libertarianism than Nozick?s, and my own preference has been to use them (Loren Lomasky?s far superior and unjustly neglected Persons Rights and the Moral Community, for example). I also like to use Milton Friedman?s brilliant little book Capitalism and Freedom, a defense of classical liberalism which occasionally invokes more conservative ideas than most libertarians countenance. Though it, too, makes numerous philosophical errors it is easier to be patient because it has so much else of value in it and because Friedman, who was not the most brilliant philosopher of his generation, does not seem so culpable for philosophical carelessness.

Friday WorkshopsAt the University of

Friday Workshops

At the University of San Diego, Steve Smith presents Nonestablishment “Under God”? The Nonsectarian Principle.
At U.B. Berkely (Boalt Hall), a conference entitled Earl Warren and the Warren Court: A Fifty-Year Retrospect. Speakers include Jesse H. Choper, Malcolm M. Feeley, Bruce E. Cain and Melissa Anderson, Yale Kamisar, William W. Van Alstyne, Gordon Silverstein, Scott Bice, James Browning, Vicki C. Jackson, Charles McCurdy, Dan Rodriguez, Lawrence M. Friedman, Harry N. Scheiber, Goodwin Liu, and Susan Sterett.
At the SUNY Buffalo, Nicola Lacey, LSE, presents Causation and the Limits of Linguistic Philosophy in Anglo-American Law.
At MIT Philosophy, Ruth Chang, Rutgers University, presents Can Desires Provide Reasons for Action?.
At the University of Texas, a conference entitled Avenues in Comparative Constitutional Law starts today.
At Tulane, the Politics, Philosophy and Economics Conference begins today. Speakers include Sam Scheffler, Marc Fleurbaey, John Roemer, Allen Buchanan, Philip Pettit, & Eric Rakowski.
At Oxford's Philosophical Society, Robert M Adams presents Idealism Vindicated.

Kaplan on Economic Inequality Richard

Kaplan on Economic Inequality Richard L. Kaplan (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College) has posted Economic Inequality and the Role of Law (Michigan Law Review, Vol. 101, No. 6, May 2003) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In Wealth and Democracy, famed commentator and analyst Kevin Phillips provides a political history of American economic life with a specific focus on the wealthy. He interweaves the development of American technology with the rise and fall of economic fortunes into a compelling tale with significant implications for the formulation of public policy and the laws that implement such policy.

This review begins by examining the major sources of economic inequality and how they have increased the gap between rich and poor in America. The wealth of historical data in the book is considered with particular attention to the past quarter of a century. During this period, after all, economic inequality in the United States grew beyond all previous measures. Some of the key themes developed in this section include: (1) the corrupting effect of concentrated economic power on the political process, (2) the impact of vast wealth on the formulation of public policy, and (3) the increasingly precarious financial situation of middle-class families.

The review then explores the role that legal regimes can play in addressing economic inequality and how Phillips systematically understated their importance - specifically, taxation, health care, and Social Security. With respect to taxation, the review analyzes three major provisions of the 2001 Tax Act: repeal of the estate tax, augmented contributions to tax-favored retirement accounts, and creation of tax-exempt college savings plans. Regarding health care, the review examines first the increasing phenomenon of workers without health insurance and then the largely invisible but painfully significant problem of long-term care. Finally, this section analyzes how Social Security consciously ameliorates economic inequality and how this feature will be discarded under most privatization proposals.

The review concludes that Kevin Phillips has written an important book that should give serious pause to lawmakers involved in a wide range of critical issues facing America today. The increasing economic inequality of recent decades poses a significant challenge to the U.S. legal system and its democratic processes. As Phillips contends, the status quo is unsustainable and plutocracy is where we are headed, if we are not already there.

Schizer on Section 1091 David

Schizer on Section 1091 David Schizer (Columbia Law School) has uploaded Scrubbing the Wash Sale Rules to SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Loss limitations are an ugly but inevitable feature of any realization-based income tax. In essence, because the system mismeasures gains, it also has to mismeasure losses. Otherwise, the timing option inherent in the realization rule would allow taxpayers to defer gains (thereby reducing the tax's present value) while accelerating losses (thereby preserving the deduction's present value).

The wash sale regime of Section 1091 is one of our system's most important brakes on the timing option. Yet it is only a slight exaggeration to say that compliance with the regime is voluntary for very wealthy taxpayers - or, at least, for those who are willing to take aggressive positions. In response, this Article flags seven glitches in the regime that, at least arguably, permit perfect end runs. As used here, this phrase refers to strategies in which taxpayers can deduct losses while effecting virtually no change in their economic position. The essential point is that, if we are going to have a wash sale regime, these end runs should not be allowed.

This Article also takes a more controversial position: Losses should still be deferred - even when taxpayers make meaningful changes in their economic position - as long as they keep material elements of their old return. The policy goal here is to ensure that, on average, taxpayers expect losses to be deferred as long as gains. This Article proposes concrete modifications in the regime to implement this goal, while also offering a caveat: The case for a strong wash sale regime is less strong if the regime can never be tough enough to stop loss harvesting. If so, other constraints on the timing option may be preferable, including accelerated timing for gains or a broader capital loss regime.

Ho & Imai on Ballot

Ho & Imai on Ballot Order Effects Daniel E. Ho and Kosuke Imai (Yale University - Law School and Princeton University - Department of Politics) have uploaded Shaken, Not Stirred: Evidence on Ballot Order Effects from the California Alphabet Lottery, 1978 - 2002 to SSRN. Here is the abstract:

We analyze a natural experiment to answer the longstanding question of whether the name order of candidates on ballots affects election outcomes. Since 1975, California law has mandated randomizing the ballot order with a lottery, where alphabet letters would be shaken vigorously and selected from a container. Previous studies, relying overwhelmingly on non-randomized data, have yielded conflicting results about whether ballot order effects even exist. Using improved statistical methods, our analysis of statewide elections from 1978 to 2002 reveals that in general elections ballot order has a significant impact only on minor party candidates and candidates for nonpartisan offices. In primaries, however, being listed first benefits everyone. In fact, ballot order might have changed the winner in roughly nine percent of all primary races examined. These results are largely consistent with a theory of partisan cuing. We propose that all electoral jurisdictions randomize ballot order to minimize ballot effects.

Law Review Submission Dates: Updated

Law Review Submission Dates: Updated as of February 27, 2004 Every Spring, new law review boards take the helm and begin considering articles for the next academic year's volume. This post, which will be continually updated and moved to the top of blog, reports on the key dates for submission to the top journals. Here is the information organized by current status for reviews that have provided information on board transitions:

• New Board Reviewing Articles Now--Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Duke Law Journal, Notre Dame Law Review, William and Mary Law Review, William Mitchell Law Review
  
• New Board Begins Operating in the Last Week of February--California Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review
  
• New Board Begins Operating in the First Week of March--Columbia Law Review, Texas Law Review, Geroge Washington Law Review, Hastings Law Journal, Emory Law Journal, Ohio State Law Journal, North Carolina Law Review, Georgia Law Review
  
• New Board Begins Operating later in March--Cornell Law Review, Fordham Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Iowa Law Review, Washington University Law Quarterly, Arizona State Law Journal, Tulane Law Review
  
• New Board Not Selected Until After March--University of Chicago Law Review, Washington & Lee Law Review (old board reviewing for next year now)

And here is the detailed information on each journal:

• Yale Law Journal--the incoming Editor-in-Chief reports that the new board is considering articles for next year's volume.
  
• Harvard Law Review--an editor reports that the new articles office is up and running.
  
• University of Chicago Law Review--the Editor-in-Chief reports that the Board turns over in mid-April of this year -- about a month after the boards of most other law reviews. The new articles editors begin considering submissions immediately thereafter. Chicago strongly encourages that articles be submitted whenever they are ready, even if that is before mid-April.
  
• Stanford Law Review--the Senior Articles Editor reports that the new board is in place and accepting manuscripts for next year.
  
• Columbia Law Review--the Executive Articles Editor reports that the incoming Articles Committee will begin reviewing submissions on March 1, 2004.
  
• California Law Review--the Managing Editor reports that the new board will begin considering articles for Volume 93 this week (around February 27).
  
• Michigan Law Review--the Articles Editor reports that the new board has been elected, they are now reading articles for the new volume, and the official transition will occur on March 10.
  
• Texas Law Review--the outgoing Edition-in-Chief reports that the the new editorial board of the Texas Law Review will begin to review articles next week (e.g. about beginning of March) and the Chief Articles Editor expects that review will start on or about March 1.
  
• Virginia Law Review--the incoming Articles Editor reports that the new board was elected on Friday, February 13, is now accepting submissions and will begin reviewing them forthwith.
  
• Georgetown Law Journal--the Senior Articles Editor reports that the new board is in place and has been considering articles since February 13th.
  
• Cornell Law Review--the website reports that the new board will begin making decisions in mid-March.
  
• Northwestern University Law Review--the website reports that submissions for the Fall and Winter issues will be accepted beginning in February.
  
• Duke Law Journal--the outgoing Editor-in-Chief reports that the new board is in place and submissions are currently being considered for the new volume. The incoming Managing editor reports that review began on February 20.
  
• Vanderbilt Law Review--the website reports that submissions will be accepted starting on March 1.
  
• Iowa Law Review--the editors report that the new board will begin reviewing submissions on March 15.
  
• Minnesota Law Review--a faculty member reports that the new board will be elected on Saturday and begin reviewing manuscripts in early March.
  
• George Washington Law Review--the Editor-in-Chief reports that the new editorial board is selected on February 20 and the incoming Articles Committee will begin reviewing submissions on March 1, 2004 for Volume 73, the first issue of which will print in November 2004. The old board does not exit until April 1.
  
• University of Illinois Law Review--the website reports that articles will be accepted starting January 20. I have been unable to confirm the board transition date.
  
• Fordham Law Review--the Editor-in-Chief reports that the new board will begin considering submissions for next year at the end of March.
  
• Hastings Law Journal--the Editor-in-Chief reports that Hastings is still considering articles for the current volume. The new board will be in place by first week in March and will begin considering articles for the new volume in the second week of March.
  
• Washington University Law Quarterly--the incoming Executive Articles Editor reports that they will begin reviewing submissions in mid-March.
  
• Emory Law Journal--the editors report that the new board will begin reviewing articles on March 1.
  
• Ohio State Law Journal--the incoming Editor-in-Chief writes they will begin accepting submissions for its Fall 2004/Spring 2005 issues on March 1, 2004.
  
• North Carolina Law Review--the website indicates that submissions will be considered for next year's volume starting on March 1.
  
• Notre Dame Law Review--the incoming Executive Editor reports that the new Board is in place and reviewing manuscripts for next year.
  
• Arizona State Law Journal--the website reports that submissions for the next volume will be accepted sometime in March.
  
• Tulane Law Review--the website reports that submissions of the next volume will be considered beginning at the end of March.
  
• William & Mary Law Review--the editors report that the new board is in place and considering submissions for next year's volume.
  
• Washington & Lee Law Review--the editors report that the new board is selected in April, but that articles are reviewed continuously.
  
• Georgia Law Review--the outgoing Executive Editor reports that the new board will begin reviewing articles on March 1.
  
• William Mitchell Law Review--the Editor-in-Chief reports that the new board has been selected and is considering articles for next year's volume.

If you would like me to list information for your journal, please email the details (including the date the new articles editors will begin work) to lsolum@sandiego.edu.