In Defense of the Underused, Much-Abused Student-Authored Recent-Developments Note

Abstract

With the advent of improved dissemination technology, the time has come for the renaissance of the student-authored recent-developments note — a brief, neutral, detached, critical, intellectual commentary and analysis of a single important case or piece of legislation. Once the staple of student law review writing, they have been discarded in favor of more sophisticated scholarship and as a concession to students’ heavy editing burdens. Legal scholarship is suffering from symptoms that link directly with its absence because students who write less scholarship are less likely to be effective writers and editors. Part II uses the development of student writing at the Harvard Law Review to illustrate the critical, valued role the recent-developments note has historically played. Part III charts the current anemic state of the recent-developments note and discusses two possible causes: the editorial burden created by the increased use of discursive footnotes, and the belief by some that the role of legal reporter, once played by the recent-developments note, is now adequately (if not completely) filled by legal blogs (or blawgs) and legal news services. To test this assumption that blogs are making recent-development notes obsolete, Part III also analyzes the blog traffic of one recent case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, U.S. v. Kramer, to demonstrate that because blog traffic tends to be reactionary or limited in its coverage, it does not always adequately address the issues raised by a decision. And if this one sample decision from a federal appeals court does not receive adequate attention, it is even more likely to be true of lower federal court or state court decisions. There is space in our legal discourse for strong student scholarship, which adds breadth and depth to an analysis of an issue, and, in this age of improved dissemination, the notes can even be timely. Reintroducing these notes into the law review will benefit the legal readership, but — as discussed in Part IV — it will also have significant benefit for the students learning the form and substance of legal scholarship, and for the faculty authors who will benefit from more experienced editors. The article ends with a few suggestions for ensuring that recent-developments notes are efficiently produced without significant additional burden on law review staffs, and are timely and effectively offered to readers.