Submissions Instructions

I. General Information

The Columbia Law Review is actively accepting piece submissions.

The Columbia Law Review is published eight times a year, in every month but February, July, August, and September. Please contact the Executive Articles EditorExecutive Essays Editor, or Executive Forum Editor with any questions about submissions guidelines or procedures.

The Columbia Law Review is also accepting email submissions to the Symposium & Book Review Editor at this time. Please see the Symposium page for more instructions regarding proposal requirements.

Scholastica
We accept and manage submissions exclusively through Scholastica. We are excited to partner with Scholastica, as it enables us to provide better, faster, and more consistent feedback and an improved submissions experience for you in the future. As a first step, we encourage authors to create an account at https://scholasticahq.com.

The Review has separate Scholastica submissions pages for Articles, Essays, and CLR Forum. As a result, you are not able to submit to the Review simultaneously with your larger pool of Scholastica submissions. Instead, please use the links below to access the right submissions page for your piece. You can also access these pages by searching for Columbia Law Review on Scholastica. Please see the Submissions Categories section below for further instructions regarding which submissions category is appropriate for your piece.

Institutions can create accounts to pay for their authors’ submissions to Scholastica, so authors affiliated with law schools will have the same payment experience they have had on ExpressO. Scholastica is committed to ensuring that authors are able to submit pieces regardless of institutional support and will consider requests for fee waivers and other accommodations at support@scholasticahq.com. Additional information about Scholastica is available on their site.

Peer Review
Because peer review of submissions improves the Columbia Law Review’s selection process and helps to verify piece originality, the Review strongly prefers subjecting submitted pieces to peer review, contingent on piece-selection timeframes and other extenuating circumstances.

Resubmissions
If you have submitted to us in the past and wish us to consider your previous submission, please resubmit your piece through Scholastica.

II. Submissions Instructions

Links to Submissions Portals
As mentioned above, we are not part of the general Scholastica submissions pool. Submissions to the Review are done separately from Scholastica submissions to other journals, using the links below:

  • To submit an Article, please click here.
  • To submit an Essay, please click here.
  • To submit a piece to CLR Forum, please click here.

Regular submissions are only accepted electronically via our separate Scholastica submissions pages (please see below). Please note that we do not accept regular submissions by disc or facsimile.

Submissions Requirements

  • Submit only one copy of your manuscript. We greatly prefer if submissions appear in Microsoft Word format.
  • Text and citations should conform to A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed. 2020) (“The Bluebook”). Footnotes are strongly preferred over endnotes.
  • We encourage the use of gender-neutral language.
  • Starting in 2024, we will give preference to pieces under 30,000 words.

Standard Exclusive Submissions
The Articles and Essays Committees welcome exclusive submissions. If you have a strong interest in publishing with the Columbia Law Review, please email your manuscript to the Executive Articles Editor or Executive Essays Editor on or after February 1, 2024. We kindly ask that you give the Review ten days for exclusive review before submitting to other journals. Please note that the Articles and Essays Committees will subject all submitted pieces to the same standard and thorough process of review.

Word Count
The Articles and Essays Committees typically accept pieces between 20,000 and 35,000 words (including footnotes), with a strong preference for pieces under 30,000 words. CLR Forum has a strong preference for pieces between 3,000 and 10,000 words (including footnotes) but will review longer pieces that meet our submissions criteria. Details on Book Review submissions can be found below.

Student-Written Work
We will not consider student-written ArticlesEssays, or CLR Forum submissions. Current Columbia Law School students can submit pieces for consideration through the Comments program.

III. Expedited Review & Withdrawals

Expedited Reviews Generally
If you have received an offer from another journal and would like to request an expedited review, please do so through Scholastica. To do this, log in to your Scholastica account, go to “My Manuscripts,” click on “Manage Submission” for your submission to our journal, and then click on “Expedite Requests.”

CLR Offers for Expedited Pieces
Please be aware of the Review‘s policy concerning expedited reviews: If the Review makes an offer of publication for an Article, Essay, or Book Review following an expedited review, the author has only one hour from the time of actual notification in which to accept the offer. This policy does not apply to CLR Forum pieces.

24-Hour Offers from Peer Journals
Furthermore, please note that CLR is often, but not always, able to accommodate 24-hour expedited review requests from our peer journals. Accordingly, if you have received an offer that expires in 24 hours, and your submission is still under review by the Articles, Essays, or CLR Forum Committees on Scholastica, we encourage authors to reach out to us as soon as possible before accepting the 24-hour offer.

Book Review Expedites
Please note that Book Reviews are generally considered on the same timeline as Symposium proposals (in late March to early April), and the Review may not be able to accommodate all expedite requests for Book Reviews. Expedite requests for Book Reviews can be requested by email.

Withdrawal
We appreciate if you are able to let us know if you decide to withdraw your submissions from consideration. You may do this through your Scholastica submissions page.

IV. Submissions Categories

We urge you to visit our homepage for examples of recent Articles, Essays, and CLR Forum publications to get a better sense of the differences between the three categories. If you are preparing to submit and have a question about which submissions category is appropriate for your piece, please reach out to the relevant Executive Editor, and we will do our best to provide guidance.

The Review is proud to publish Articles, Essays, and select Book Reviews in its print volumes, while CLR Forum is published exclusively online. While Articles and Essays are distinct in substance and tone, there is no difference in citation format between the two, and our editing process is the same for Articles, Essays, CLR Forum, and Book Reviews.

Articles
Articles tend to analyze a problem and suggest a solution. Such analysis usually articulates some background information to inform the reader before turning to a novel argument. Along these lines, published articles regularly follow a traditional roadmap of introduction, background, analysis/argument, and conclusion, and provide a comprehensive treatment of a particular area of law. Articles tend to be formal in both the author’s tone and in the obligation to ground information and analysis in comprehensive substantive support via consistent citation.

The Columbia Law Review Articles Committee is actively accepting piece submissions. Although we don’t have a set portal-closure date, Articles Committees in the past couple of years have stopped accepting new submissions at the end of the first week of March. We recommend submitting your submissions as soon as possible since we review them on a rolling basis. If you are unable to submit this cycle, we currently anticipate reopening for submissions around August 1, 2024.

To submit an Article, please click here or on the button below.

Scholastica

Essays
Essays tend to explore novel issues. While they are similar to Articles both with respect to scope and sophistication, Essays tend to differ from Articles in that they often exercise significantly more structural, stylistic, and substantive flexibility. Essay authors wield this flexibility in a wide variety of ways, with some choosing to pursue an ambitious or provocative rethinking of an area of the law, and others choosing instead to offer commentary on a legal concept or doctrine intended for a peer audience. Essays also tend to be shorter than Articles, although they need not be. The Essays Committee will close its Scholastica portal on Friday, March 8, 2024.

To submit an Essay, please click here or on the button below.

Scholastica

Columbia Law Review Forum

CLR Forum is no longer accepting submissions.

CLR Forum is the online companion to the print journal and its purpose is to provide a forum for legal discussion from a variety of perspectives. CLR Forum is committed to publishing short, timely works of original scholarship, often responding to new legal developments or anticipating changes that will come in the future, as well as responses to scholarship that appears in the Review’s print edition. The criteria for online publication are consistent with the Review’s standards as a leading source of legal scholarship and include the same editing process as our print publications. CLR Forum pieces are published throughout the year on a continuous basis. Published content is available on Westlaw, LexisNexis, Hein, and EBSCO. CLR Forum publications are also permanently available online on CLR Forum’s webpage and in PDF form, formatted and paginated in the same manner as our print publications.

To submit a piece to CLR Forum, please click here or on the button below.

Scholastica

Book Reviews
Book Reviews provide a unique opportunity to comment on contemporary legal scholarship. Book Reviews range in style and length, but typically include a description of the book, an accompanying critical analysis, and an evaluation of the book in relation to relevant areas of the law. Book Reviews should not merely summarize the book, but instead offer an argument as to the merit and significance of the work. Completed book reviews are strongly preferred to book review proposals, but proposals will be considered. Book Reviews will be accepted via email to the Symposium & Book Review Editor. Email submissions should include the manuscript, the author’s CV, and a brief cover letter describing the scope of the book review and its anticipated word count.