Iowa Law Review

• 1. Introduction

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  The Iowa Law Review has spent more than a century shaping American legal thought from a campus in Iowa City. It began not as a polished journal but as a modest bulletin published by faculty, running from 1891 to 1900. When the Bulletin came back to life in 1915, it brought students into the editorial process alongside professors. The journal that emerged from that reinstatement would go on to be cited by the United States Supreme Court, to spark a revision in state law, and to earn a place among the most-cited legal journals in the country. How did a regional publication become a national legal reference? And what does it mean for a student-run journal to leave a mark on landmark decisions?

• 2. From Bulletin to Review

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  The original Iowa Law Bulletin ran for about a decade before going quiet, then returned in 1915 under a joint faculty-and-student editorial model. By 1925 the journal had a new name: the Iowa Law Review. The name change came with a declared purpose. The editorial vision at the time stated that the journal's focus would be on Iowa legal issues, but acknowledged that "occasionally an article of general scope would appear." That hedge proved to be an understatement. Over the decades that followed, the Review published widely on national and international law, ranging far beyond the borders of a single state.

  The journal became fully student-edited in 1935, a structural shift that placed law students in charge of selecting, editing, and publishing scholarship. That model has continued ever since. Today the journal appears five times each year, and it ranks 14th among 1,550 journals indexed in the W&L ranking.

• 3. First in Symposia

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  In 1933, the Iowa Law Review organized a symposium on administrative law, titled "Administrative Law Based upon Legal Writings 1931-1933." It was the first such symposium ever held by a law review. Administrative law, which governs how government agencies operate and make decisions, was an emerging field at the time, and the journal placed itself at the center of the conversation.

  That first symposium set a pattern. The Review continued holding symposia on questions of national significance, making the format a recurring part of its identity. The tradition of gathering legal scholars around a single pressing topic, which is now common across law journals, traces one of its earliest roots to that 1933 initiative.

• 4. The Contemporary Studies Project

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  Starting in 1968, the Iowa Law Review launched what it called the "Contemporary Studies Project." These were not brief articles but large-scale inquiries, often empirical and often spanning more than a year of research. Some reached audiences well beyond the academy. A study published in 1970 titled "Facts and Fallacies About Iowa Civil Commitment," which appeared at volume 55, page 895, led directly to a revision of Iowa's civil commitment laws in 1975.

  Two other projects earned wide citation in courts and legal scholarship across the United States. A 1978 study comparing Iowans' dispositive preferences with the Iowa and Uniform Probate Codes appeared at volume 63, page 1041. A 1990 study analyzing Iowa's Small Claims Court appeared at volume 75, page 433. Both have been cited repeatedly by courts throughout the country, giving the Review a presence in actual legal proceedings rather than just in academic libraries.

• 5. Supreme Court Citations

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  The Iowa Law Review's reach into the highest levels of American law became especially clear in a series of citations spanning 2009 and 2010. In April 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court issued its decision in Varnum v. Brien, which struck down Iowa's ban on same-sex marriage. In that ruling, the court cited a student note published in the Iowa Law Review.

  The following January, the United States Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC. Justices Scalia and Stevens, writing in separate concurrences, both cited Randall P. Bezanson's article "Institutional Speech," published in volume 80 of the Iowa Law Review at page 735 in 1995. Within months of that ruling, the Supreme Court returned to the Review in its March 2010 decision of Padilla v. Kentucky. That decision cited Jenny Roberts's article "Ignorance Is Effectively Bliss: Collateral Consequences, Silence, and Misinformation in the Guilty-Plea Process," from volume 95 at page 119. Three landmark decisions citing the same journal within roughly a year is a measure of influence that few academic publications can claim.