A Blog Entry About Law Review Article Titles: An Exercise In Frivolity
Things have gotten a little heated on N&B recently, so I thought I'd brighten the mood with a post we could all have a little fun with... PLUS, bonus finals period procrastination!
I've been doing some research for a paper, and I keep stumbling across unintentionally hilarious law review article titles, almost uniformally abusing the colon as a punctuation mark. Today, for example, I stumbled across 77 Wash. L. R. 1035, better known as "The Socio-Legal Acceptance of New Technologies: A Close Look At Artificial Insemination." This is funny on a few levels, from the juvenile (artificial insemination. hehe.) to the collegiate (a "close look" at artificial insemination... ewww. no thanks.) to the absurd (think of how what precedes the colon relates to what follows).
In any case, I invite our dear readers to submit their favorite law review article titles, preferably but not necessarily involving the colon. In fact, I'll make a contest of it: I'll buy the poster of the winning entry a beverage of his or her choice at the bar review of his or her choice. Entries can range from the oddly funny (see above) to the more clever funny (see "Taking Taking Rights Seriously Seriously" 52 NYU L. Rev. 1265 (1977). Please try to keep them funny funny though, seriously seriously.
And yes, an ancillary humorous benefit of this post was to be able to employ the word colon as many times as possible.
I've been doing some research for a paper, and I keep stumbling across unintentionally hilarious law review article titles, almost uniformally abusing the colon as a punctuation mark. Today, for example, I stumbled across 77 Wash. L. R. 1035, better known as "The Socio-Legal Acceptance of New Technologies: A Close Look At Artificial Insemination." This is funny on a few levels, from the juvenile (artificial insemination. hehe.) to the collegiate (a "close look" at artificial insemination... ewww. no thanks.) to the absurd (think of how what precedes the colon relates to what follows).
In any case, I invite our dear readers to submit their favorite law review article titles, preferably but not necessarily involving the colon. In fact, I'll make a contest of it: I'll buy the poster of the winning entry a beverage of his or her choice at the bar review of his or her choice. Entries can range from the oddly funny (see above) to the more clever funny (see "Taking Taking Rights Seriously Seriously" 52 NYU L. Rev. 1265 (1977). Please try to keep them funny funny though, seriously seriously.
And yes, an ancillary humorous benefit of this post was to be able to employ the word colon as many times as possible.
posted by Anonymous at 8:31 AM
9 Comments:
Larry Kramer, Return of the Renvoi, 66 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 979 (1991). Corny use of different langauges, about the funniest thing you encounter in Conflicts of Law (except for maybe "Reverse Babcock").
Eugene Volokh & Alex Kozinski, Lawsuit Shmawsuit, 103 Yale L. J. 463 (1993). About yiddish words in the law. Pretty classic.
Lawrence Singer, Gloria Jean Ate Catfood Tonight: Justice and the Social Compact for Health Care in America, 36 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 613 (2005).
Bonus: the piece opens with a sad story about an old woman named Gloria Jean who is forced to eat cat food so she can save to pay for her prescription drugs. It's footnoted: "This story is fictitious to illustrate the painful trade-offs that individuals lacking health insurance or financial resources to pay for medical care must make every day." Seriously.
Great find!
I don't think anyone is going to top Gloria Jean Ate Catfood (But Not Really). And the messed-up part is that because Lexis and Westlaw print articles with all the footnotes at the end, most student readers probably never check the footnote and thus never notice it is made up.
Perhaps we should show this to Amy Dhall and Mark Cygnet as an example of why Lexis and Westlaw should have an option for printing articles as they actually appear in the journals.
Joseph Lubinski, Comment: The Cow Says Moo, The Duck Says Quack, and the Dog Says Vote! the Use of the Initiative to Promote Animal Protection, 74 U. Colo. L. Rev. 1109 (2003)
(no colon, but a lovely use of an exclamation point)
Janeen Kerper, Legal Education: Creative Problem Solving vs. the Case Method: A Marvelous Adventure in which Winnie-the-Pooh Meets Mrs. Palsgraf, 34 Cal. W. L. Rev. 351 (1998)
(double colon!)
Daniel J. Beckwith, Essay: Is Bob Marley Dead or Just Ambidextrous? 29 Creighton L. Rev 1477 (1996)
Peter J. Brann, Frog Legs are Tasty: a Recipe for the Law Court, 14 Maine Bar J. 300 (1999)
I wouldn't go so far as to say that these are funnier than Gloria Jean, but they do demonstrate some of the amazingly bizarre titles that get published. Entering random words into the title search on Lexis produces some great results and also provides a new way to procrastinate. Thanks!
The Palsgraf one is a contender.
It must be excruciating to have to edit these articles. I mean, those of us on CLR or ELQ or the women's one or BTLJ or BJEL have a hard enough time concentrating and editing and understanding the material -- and we're getting world-class scholarshp from world-class writers.
Compare this with the kids at Creighton or Colorado, who are working with a) more arcane and ridiculous stuff by b) (arguably) way more inexperienced profs that are publishing in the Loyola Chicano Law Review because c) no one else would take them. Is that process just like gouging one's eyes out? Or is it so completely bad that they basically just end for punctuation and let the authors do whatever they want?
"just end for punctuation."
Did you mean "edit"? The irony gods are smiling...
Another telling moment: the poster knows the acronym for CLR, ELQ, BTLJ, and makes a good guess at BJELL but can only refer to BGLJ as "the women's one." It's the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice folks. Not that hard to remember! (If you care, that is.) It would be more understandable if the writer called it BJGLJ or something. But "the women's one?" Come on!
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