Robin Effron's post over at prawfs about the law school discussion issues that Donald Trump inspires reminds me: I've been meaning to post something about his citations in law reviews. For starters, if he were a law professor he'd be one of the most cited -- I did a westlaw search recently in the law reviews file and found that about 750 articles mention him. A lot for issues related to securities law.
Back in 2009 I asked a trivia question: who was the first person to cite Obama in a law review article? Thinking on this this recently, I wondered what was the first law review article to cite Donald Trump? I wish it was Seth Goodchild's note, "Media Counteractions: Restoring the Balance to Modern Libel Law," which appeared in the Georgetown Law Journal back in October 1986. Why? Because it cited him for this: "Donald Trump's complaint against the Chicago Tribune seeking relief for criticism of his proposed skyscraper was eventually dismissed. Wash. Post, Oct. 19, 1985, at A23, col. 1." Alas, there were two pieces earlier.
Anyone want to hazard a guess as to the topic for which he was cited? The answer is beneath the fold.
Giving credit where it is due, it was actually Robin Effron's post--I just commented to it. But re: presidential candidate citations, your post made me run a search to see how Trump's citations compare to Ted Cruz's--and somewhat surprisingly, it looks like Trump has more Westlaw hits. I used to work for Ted back in Austin, and one of the things that has burned in my memory is his assessment that it takes "about a weekend, more or less" to write a good law review article. Maybe for Cass Sunstein or Eric Posner? Sadly, not for me.
Posted by: CBR | May 02, 2016 at 11:42 AM