HLS Professors Mark Ramseyer ’82 and Steven Shavell
February 05, 2009
In the summer of 2007, HLS Professors Mark Ramseyer ’82 and Steven Shavell approached editors at Harvard University Press with the idea of starting a unique online venture: a broad-focused, faculty-edited journal with an open access format, to provide first-rate scholarship to the widest possible audience.
This week, their brainchild, the Journal of Legal Analysis, was launched. Created in partnership with Harvard University Press and the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business, the journal is available free online at http://jla.hup.harvard.edu.
“Steve and I came up with this idea in casual conversation one day. I had edited the Journal of Legal Studies at Chicago, and he edited the American Law and Economics Review, so we both had experience editing professional law journals,” said Ramseyer, who serves at the journal’s editor-in-chief. “We wanted to see a faculty-edited, peer reviewed journal that was not field specific. This seemed like a good time to try.”
Ramseyer says the journal represents a landmark in law journal publishing, one that fills a gap left by student-edited law reviews. He hopes the journal will make peer editing more universal for legal scholarship. Shavell, who serves as co-editor, adds: “Peer-reviewed journals are the norm in all disciplines except for law.”
According to Ramseyer, most student-edited journals have a broad focus, while faculty-edited journals tend to be specialized. The mission of the Journal of Legal Analysis is to publish the best legal scholarship from all disciplinary perspectives and in all styles, covering the whole span of the legal academy.
The eight articles in the launch issue include: “Are Judges Overpaid? A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate” by Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati, Eric A. Posner; “Equality in Criminal Law: The Two Divergent Western Roads” by James Q. Whitman; and “Judicial Review of Class Action Settlements” by Jonathan R. Macey and Geoffrey P. Miller.
Two HLS professors also contributed scholarship.
Adriane Vermeule ’93 wrote “Many-Minds Arguments in Legal Theory,” an essay that identifies five general and recurring problems with ‘many-minds’ arguments that claim that groups of decision-makers tend to make better decisions than individuals.
Cass Sunstein co-wrote “Extremism and Social Learning” with Harvard University Economics Professor Edward Glaeser, about the phenomenon of group polarization that occurs among members of deliberating groups, such as juries, tribunals or corporate boards.
The journal’s co-editors include Shavell; Richard Craswell, Stanford University; Mathew McCubbins, University of California, San Diego; and Daniel Rubinfeld, University of California, Berkeley. Scholars from various fields have signed on to be members of the 20-member editorial board, including HLS Professors Louis Kaplow ’81, Kathryn Spier, Sunstein and Vermeule.
Published by Harvard University Press, the journal provides open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
All JLA articles are free on the web and will be posted on the journal’s website as soon as they are ready for publication. Once a year, published articles will be bundled into bound volumes and made available for purchase.
The journal marks Harvard University Press’s first foray into online, Open Access publishing. It is also the first new journal HUP has published in 30 years. In the 1970s, HUP ceased publishing academic journals, deciding that journal publishing no longer fit in with its overall strategy.
“Harvard University Press’s mission has always been the dissemination of first-rate scholarship to the widest possible audience; we are thrilled that technology has enabled us to further that mission in ways never imagined when the Press was founded in 1913,” said Bill Sisler, HUP’s press director.
Major funding for the journal is provided by Terence Considine ’71 and the Considine Family Foundation. The John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business, Harvard Law School and Harvard University Press are also contributing in various ways.
Ramseyer is the Mitsubishi Professor of Japanese Legal Studies. A leading scholar on Japanese law, he is the author of several books, including “The Fable of the Keiretsu: Urban Legends of the Japanese Economy” and “Odd Markets in Japanese History: Law and Economic Approach.”
Shavell is the Samuel R. Rosenthal Professor of Law and Economics and director of the Olin Center. He is the author of “Foundations of Economic Analysis of Law” and “Economic Analysis of Accident Law.”
