Harvard Law Review

The Harvard Law Review, an independent student-run publication at Harvard Law School, first appeared on April 15, 1887, making it one of the oldest continuously operating student-edited law reviews in the country. Its founding was largely driven by Louis Brandeis, a recent Harvard Law graduate and Boston lawyer who would later serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The journal comes out monthly from November to June, with the November issue focused on the Supreme Court’s most recent term. It also runs the Harvard Law Review Forum, an online-only publication that features scholarly responses to pieces in the main journal.

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the Review’s 2015 impact factor of 4.979 ranked it first among 143 law journals. It also holds the top spot in other ranking systems. The journal is one of three honors societies at the law school, alongside the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and the Board of Student Advisors; students selected for more than one of these groups may only join one. The Harvard Law Review Association, together with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal, publishes *The Bluebook*, the standard U.S. legal citation guide.

From the 1880s until the 1970s, editors were chosen based on grades, with the highest-ranking student serving as president. The first female editor was Priscilla Holmes (volumes 67–68, 1953–1955); the first female president, Susan Estrich, took over in 1977 and later became the youngest woman granted tenure at Harvard Law. The first non-white ethnic minority president was Raj Marphatia (volume 101, 1988), now a partner at Ropes & Gray. Barack Obama, the 44th U.S. president, became the first African-American president in 1991. Mitchell Reich was the first openly gay president (2011), and Andrew M. Crespo, now a tenured Harvard Law professor, was the first Latino president. ImeIme Umana became the first female African-American president in 2017.

Since the 1970s, grades are no longer the primary selection criterion. Membership is offered to Harvard law students based on first-year grades and a blind writing competition held at the end of the first year, except for twelve discretionary slots. The competition involves editing an unpublished article and analyzing a recent Supreme Court or Court of Appeals case. Fourteen editors (two from each 1L section) are chosen based on grades and competition scores; twenty are selected solely on competition scores; the remaining twelve are discretionary. According to the Review’s website, some discretionary slots may be used for affirmative action. The president is elected by the other editors.

Since the first issue, student works published in the Review have been called “notes” and remain unsigned, reflecting that many editors contribute to each piece. In 2012, the journal had 1,722 paid subscriptions.

In November 2023, the Review stopped publication of “The Ongoing Nakba: Towards a Legal Framework for Palestine,” a short commissioned essay by Palestinian Harvard Law student Rabea Eghbariah. The online chairs had asked Eghbariah to write a blog post. *The Intercept* reported that president Apsara Iyer, backed by a majority of leadership, delayed publication due to “safety concerns and the desire to deliberate with editors.” The piece was never published by the Review. It later appeared in *The Nation* in November and in *The Harbinger* of the N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change in December. Twenty-five editors objected publicly, calling the decision an “unprecedented decision [that] threatens academic freedom and perpetuates the suppression of Palestinian voices.” The following spring, Eghbariah expanded the essay into a full law review article, “Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept,” published in the Columbia Law Review, where administrative attempts to suppress it also occurred but were ultimately overcome.

The Review’s home since the 1920s has been Gannett House, a white Greek Revival building typical of mid-to-late 19th-century New England. Before that, it was housed in the Law School’s Austin Hall.

Notable alumni include U.S. President Barack Obama (president of volume 104); Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer (articles editor, volume 77), Felix Frankfurter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (editor for one year before transferring to Columbia), Ketanji Brown Jackson (supervising editor, volume 109), Elena Kagan (supervising editor, volume 99), John G. Roberts Jr. (managing editor, volume 92), Antonin Scalia (notes editor, volume 73), and Edward Sanford; and other jurists such as David J. Barron.