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ERIC Number: EJ905006
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Sep
Pages: 34
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0896-5811
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
What's in a Name? The Letterhead Impact Project
Yamamoto, Kevin M.
Journal of Legal Studies Education, v22 n1 p65-98 Sep 2004
A widespread deeply held belief by law professors is that law reviews are unfairly prejudiced and biased in favor of papers from authors at higher ranked, or more prestigious, institutions. This article was born out of a desire to test a belief held by law professors that those individuals who have positions at higher ranked law schools receive preferential treatment in papers submitted to law reviews. To test this, a paper, which was written by one of the author's colleagues who was visiting at George Mason University School of Law (GMU), was submitted using two different letterheads. It was thought that the papers sent along with GMU letterhead would receive preferential treatment, but this was not the case. After waiting to see when and how the paper was acknowledged, reviewed, and accepted by the different law reviews, data analysis was used to determine if the two groups differed statistically. Contrary to expectations, there was no significant statistical difference between the two groups in the time of response, type of response, or whether the article was accepted. However, the single offer of publication, which occurred after only fourteen days, came from a law review that received the article on GMU letterhead. This article details the methods and results and includes a discussion of those results. The second section discusses the nature of law reviews and the law review processes, including the difficulties law review staffs face in manuscript review. The third section gives background on the importance of law review publication to legal scholars and their submission processes. The fourth section gives an overview of the methods used in this particular experiment, and the fifth section gives the detailed results. The sixth section is a discussion of those results and a conclusion. (Contains 112 footnotes.)
Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/WileyCDA/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Texas; Virginia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A