Alabama Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review

It is my pleasure to mention that the inaugural issue of the Alabama  Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review has appeared.  This is something that Alabama students have been planning for a long time -- it was under discussion for a few years before I left Tuscaloosa and I have finished my third year in Chapel Hill.  The deliberation and planning has been worth the wait and the first issue is a lovely capstone to a lot of hard work, as well as a nice invitation to future work.

The journal's editors --  inspired I suppose by the old standby, "We Shall Overcome" -- solicited some people to write about the question, "have we overcome?"  My contribution to the inaugural issue, which reframed the question as has the University of Alabama overcome, is here.  It was a pleasure having the chance to revisit the University's history and a few other topics in the state's history.

The inaugural issue has a fabulous collection of articles -- Anita L. Allen writes about "Associational Privacy and the First Amendment: NAACP v. Alabama, Privacy and Data Protection"; Sheryll Cashin writes about "Shall We Overcome?  'Post-Racialism' and Inclusion in the 21st Century"; Judge U.W. Clemon and Stephanie Y. Moore write about "Justice Clarence Thomas: The Burning of Civil Rights Bridges"; Royal Dumas writes about "The Students at the University of Alabama in 1845 and the Families that Sent Them"; and Joseph Singer writes about "The Anti-Apartheid Principle in American Property Law."  Two of the journal's editors Karthik Subramanian and Alexander E. Vaughn also have essays here -- Karthik's on the Alabama anti-sex toys statute and  Alexander's on the standards for plain view searches involving computers.

I am very much honored to be in such fantastic company.  I'm very much looking forward to reading all of the pieces and hope to chat about several of them in more depth -- especially Cashin's and Singer's, but I want to talk for a moment about Royal's article, which I read an early version of many years ago.   Royal goes back to trace the students at Alabama in the mid 1840s, to find out something about their social origins.  Perhaps unsurprisingly -- though importantly -- he shows that they came from quite wealthy families.  This helps us fill in the picture of proslavery thought on the campus.  Royal's article provides an important context for the statements of proslavery thought that appeared frequently in literary addresses at Alabama in the years before the Civil War.

The image is of the Birmingham Public Library, a place that occupies a small role in my essay.  I took that picture when I was back in Birmingham in February.

Comments

[UNLV Law Prof]

Could you enlighten us on the thought process that lead your students to conclude that there was need for yet another specialty journal? It seems to me that we have more than enough, and even those journals have trouble filling their books.

[Alfred Brophy]

Hi UNLV LP,

They wanted a journal that focused on civil rights, which is of great interest to a lot of the students. In addition to the Alabama Law Review, which only a small percentage of the class will be able to participate on, UA has the Journal of Legal Profession and the Law and Psychology Review. While all those journals provide a really meaningful educational experience for the students who're on them -- and sometimes students on those journals write about civil rights -- a significant number of students wanted a journal focused on their particular area of interest.

I've blogged before about some of the problems with creating new specialized journals -- like that may reduce the need for mainstream reviews to publish on specialized topics (and thus inadvertently lead to channeling important but specialized scholarship away from main journals). http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2010/07/the-little-man-at-the-116th-street-subway-station.html

But I think it's important to give students -- particularly the highly motivated students who started this journal -- the opportunity to develop their areas of interest. The first issue is testimony to the initial success of the project and they have another volume well along, which will publish papers from a symposium this spring, which had a great line-up of speakers.

[AnonProf]

I have to admit, I groaned when I saw this. Folks complain that the ABA needs to limit new law schools. I think we all need to limit new law reviews. The more you create, the more things get published. That's great up until a point -- then, that which isn't getting published, probably shouldn't be published. Keep creating journals, however, and then editors are forced to dip further and further into the "bad" pile to fill their books. Enough!

[Alfred Brophy]

I'm sorry you feel that way AnonProf. The inaugural issue of the journal is really terrific and a sign of more good things to come, I'm sure. Plus -- and I think this is often overlooked in talking about journals -- service on a journal is an excellent learning experience for the students. A journal is a way for students to get a valuable educational experience and work on a project that they're passionate about.

I'd also add that my essay discusses a number of student notes published in the Alabama Law Review that are really well-done, significant works of scholarship. And I think if more students serve on a journal that you'll encourage more good works along those lines. There's certainly no shortage of data to analyze related to race and law in the south.

[Matthew Reid Krell]

UNLV LP,

I was, for my sins, the first "Editor-in-Chief" of the Alabama Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law Review. The benefit to this is that I got to list journal experience without having to actually edit a journal, as the work my board did was organizational rather than editorial. But it could be argued that that was as difficult or more difficult than editing; I wouldn't say so, but some might.

The journal had its genesis in a conversation with a classmate of mine, who told me that Alabama needed an international law journal. I corrected her and said that she was right, that we needed another journal - but it needed to focus on civil rights. We gathered together a group of students, and we convinced the administration that both student needs and scholar needs were insufficiently met by current journal opportunities. AnonProf is correct, speaking generally, but the data we collected (which was exhaustive) suggests that the saturation point is "not yet."