UCLA Law Review: A Comprehensive Overview
The UCLA Law Review, published six times a year by students of the UCLA School of Law and the Regents of the University of California, stands as a prominent legal periodical in the United States. This completely student-run organization vests all management, editorial, and publication control in its members. Membership on the Law Review is decided on the basis of a Write-on competition that first year students complete after their spring semester. Success leads to a year of service as a member of the Law Review's staff.
Mission and Scope
The UCLA Law Review has earned a reputation as one of the nation's leading legal periodicals. UCLA Law is home to more than a dozen student-edited journals packed with critical analyses of today’s most pressing legal issues. Some of our publications - including the Asian Pacific American Law Journal and the National Black Law Journal - were the first of their kind in the nation. The UCLA Law Review aims to provide a platform for scholarly discourse and in-depth analysis of contemporary legal issues. It publishes articles by leading scholars, practitioners, and students, contributing to the development and understanding of law across various fields.
History
The UCLA Law Review has a rich history dating back to its establishment in 1953. Originally, UCLA Law proposed in 1950 that either Berkeley and UCLA should publish a joint law review or that all law schools in the state should jointly publish a law review. Over the years, it has evolved into a highly respected publication, known for its rigorous selection process and the quality of its content.
Membership and Editorial Selection
Membership on the UCLA Law Review is highly competitive and is based on a write-on competition completed by first-year students after their spring semester. The editorial board is selected from the staff.
Other Journals at UCLA School of Law
UCLA Law is home to a diverse array of student-edited journals, each focusing on specific areas of law. These journals provide a platform for in-depth analysis of contemporary legal issues and contribute to the scholarly discourse in their respective fields. Some notable journals include:
Read also: Remembering NCAA Football
Asian Pacific American Law Journal
The Asian Pacific American Law Journal is the first law journal in the nation to address the legal, social and political issues facing the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community.
Chicanx-Latinx Law Review
The Chicanx-Latinx Law Review is one of a few legal journals in the country devoted to scholarly analysis of issues relevant to Chicano and Latino communities. It publishes articles by judges, lawyers and scholars who provide new perspectives on the legal problems of the Latino community.
Criminal Justice Law Review (CJLR)
The Criminal Justice Law Review (CJLR) focuses on current topics in criminal law, policy, and practice. CJLR seeks to develop a discourse regarding criminal justice by publishing articles, editorials, and interviews of practitioners, academics, and policymakers.
Disability Law Journal at UCLA (DLJ)
The Disability Law Journal at UCLA (DLJ) focuses on current topics in disability law and related fields. The DLJ seeks to develop a discourse regarding disability law by publishing articles; editorials; and interviews of practitioners, academics, policymakers, and other members of the disability law community. The DLJ also seeks to recognize the contributions to the field of disability law made by scholars before the establishment of the DLJ, and we does so by republishing relevant scholarship as necessary.
Dukeminier Awards Journal
Each year, the Dukeminier Awards Journal staff and faculty advisory board identify the best articles on sexual orientation law and public policy from law reviews around the country and reprint these articles in a prize journal.
Read also: In-depth Look at Education Review
Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture & Resistance
We are the Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture & Resistance and we are here to serve as a law journal that publishes writings concerning Native Peoples’ cultures, traditions, and histories.
Journal of Environmental Law and Policy
The Journal of Environmental Law and Policy offers diverse perspectives on topics of current environmental interest, such as toxic waste disposal and solar water heating.
Journal of Gender and Law
The Journal of Gender and Law, published biannually since 1989, provides a forum for feminist legal scholarship written by academics and students.
Journal of International Law & Foreign Affairs
The Journal of International Law & Foreign Affairs is an interdisciplinary publication promoting scholarship in international law and international relations. It publishes articles by leading scholars, practitioners and other professionals from around the world, as well as student comments.
Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law
Established in 2001, the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law is the first journal in the United States dedicated to this area of study. The inaugural issue was published in 2002.
Read also: UoPeople: Pros and Cons
Journal of Law and Technology
Since 1996, the Journal of Law and Technology has produced an online journal providing a forum for timely and relevant materials addressing the law's attempt to keep pace with technological innovation. JOLT's content includes traditional scholarly articles and comments, and practical advice from attorneys practicing at the cutting edge of law and technology.
National Black Law Journal
The National Black Law Journal has been committed to scholarly discourse exploring the intersection of race and the law for 35 years. Started in 1970 by five African-American law students and two African-American law professors, the NBLJ was the first of its kind in the country. It has aimed to build on this tradition by publishing articles that make a substantive contribution to current dialogue taking place around issues such as affirmative action, employment law, the criminal justice system, community development and labor issues.
Pacific Basin Law Journal
The Pacific Basin Law Journal is the only law review in the country devoted to the study of international and comparative law within the rapidly developing economic sphere of the Pacific Basin. Articles and case notes are solicited from members of the international legal community throughout East Asia and the Americas.
Notable Articles and Themes
The UCLA Law Review covers a wide range of legal topics, reflecting the diverse interests and expertise of its contributors. Some recurring themes and notable articles include:
Corporate Governance and Institutional Investors
The UCLA Law Review has published articles discussing the potential promise and limits of oversight of corporate managers by major institutional investors. These articles explore the reasons to believe that, at least for systemic issues that arise at many firms, there can be value is assigning one set of loosely watched agents (institutional money managers) to watch another set (corporate managers). This is partly because, as long as it takes a number of institutions to strongly influence corporate actions, the institutions can also watch each other, thus reducing the risk that any one of them will extract private benefits from the firm. The case for shared institutional voice (with six or ten institutions, often different types of institutions, exercising joint influence) is stronger than the case for direct institutional control of a firm by a particular institution.
Securities Markets and Investor Protection
The UCLA Law Review features articles that emphasize that a strong securities market rests on a complex network of legal and market institutions that ensure that minority shareholders (1) receive good information about the value of a company's business and (2) have confidence that a company's managers and controlling shareholders won't cheat them out of most or all of the value of their investment. A country whose laws and related institutions fail on either count cannot develop a strong securities market, forcing firms to rely on internal financing or bank financing - both of which have important shortcomings. In this Article, Professor Bernard Black explains why these two investor protection issues are critical, related, and hard to solve. He discusses which laws and institutions are most important for each, which of these laws and institutions can be borrowed from countries with strong securities markets, and which must be homegrown. A shorter and earlier version of this article was published as "The Core Institutions that Support Strong Securities Markets," Business Lawyer, Vol. 55, pp. 1565-1607, 2000.
Criminal Justice and Social Justice
The UCLA Law Review addresses the myriad causes and consequences of mass incarceration discussed herein call for increased attention to the interface between the dynamics that constitute race, gender, and class power, as well as to the way these dynamics converge and rearticulate themselves within institutional settings to manufacture social punishment and human suffering. Beyond addressing the convergences between private and public power that constitute the intersectional dimensions of social control, this Article addresses political failures within the antiracism and antiviolence movements that may contribute to the legitimacy of the contemporary punishment culture, both ideologically and materially.
Abortion and American Exceptionalism
The UCLA Law Review explores why abortion is being recriminalized in the United States in sharp contrast to the historical evolution of reproductive rights. Its thesis is that abortion exemplifies American exceptionalism in the original sense of the phrase that America is an "exception," especially within the Western world. Yet exceptionalism should not be misunderstood as historical determinism or cultural essentialism. By the early 1970s, America was converging with peer Western democracies in liberalizing abortion. pro-life movement in an age when tolerance or support for reproductive rights increasingly became the norm abroad. When Dobbs overruled Roe, it not only exacerbated polarization within America, but also the divide between America and other Western democracies. allies, which led to remarkable public statements by Justice Samuel Alito defending his decision from condemnation by foreign leaders. While abortion is often analyzed in isolation, this multidisciplinary Article focuses on its interrelationship with wider features of American exceptionalism. A distinctive religious landscape sheds light on the intensity of opposition to abortion among the substantial minority of Americans who share a traditionalist worldview. The history of Catholicism and evangelicalism in America has notably diverged from fellow Western societies in ways that are largely overlooked. anti-abortion movement, which has an outsized impact due to the exeptional weight of lobbying by special interests over American government. Supreme Court has further enabled this movement to be highly effective. In contrast, organized opposition to abortion has declined elsewhere in the West concurrently with the decline of organized religion, especially traditionalist conceptions of Christianity.
Death Penalty and Dignity
The UCLA Law Review has published articles that explore the volunteer paradox: Death-sentenced individuals waive dignity-enhancing procedures (like appellate review). This Article lays out the dignitary interests at stake, consciously juxtaposing death row volunteerism against physician-assisted suicide. Supreme Court. Death row is a crucible of dignity lashes. Death row volunteerism thus presents a unique and extreme paradigm to wade into the larger "dignity in the law" debate. On one side of the debate are dignity skeptics who believe dignity can only be thematic dicta in jurisprudence because dignity is too fragile and subjective of a concept to be operational in the law. On the other side are dignity proponents who argue dignity can and should be part of a judge's assessment.
Spousal Communications Privilege
The UCLA Law Review has published articles that advance a normative and constitutional defense of the spousal communications privilege. State v. jurisdiction. The court’s utilitarian analysis treats the privilege as an instrumentally ineffective deterrent to spousal testimony, arguing it protects communications that would occur even without its existence. But this logic, adapted from professional privileges such as attorney-client confidentiality, misunderstands the privilege’s function as a protection of personal rather than procedural integrity. Moreover, the court’s “humanistic” dismissal of marital autonomy and intimacy as mere sentiment ignores the constitutional dimensions of privacy and liberty embedded in the marriage relationship. Drawing on theorists such as Milton Regan, D.C. Schindler, and Hegel, this Article reframes the privilege not as an evidentiary anomaly, but as a legal expression of relational self-authorship-a dimension of human dignity protected by substantive due process. Griswold v. Obergefell v. of non-professional privileges to similarly profound relationships. Rather than being a sentimental relic, the spousal communications privilege is a vital legal recognition of the communal nature of personhood and an indispensable component of the administration of justice in a free society.
Fourth Amendment and Automated License Plate Readers
The UCLA Law Review has published articles that address the privacy risks posed by expansive and long-term ALPR surveillance, at times drawing parallels to the cell-site location data in Carpenter v. United States. With privacy in mind, this Comment proposes a judicial rule consistent with Carpenter that would require a warrant to access ALPR data that is older than six days. This would limit the retention of data about vehicles not tied to criminal investigations while balancing individual privacy interests with law enforcement’s needs.
Immigration and Access to Justice
The UCLA Law Review has published articles that examine the opportunities and limitations of universal representation programs, accredited representatives, and the Legal Orientation Program.
