In a special, remote-recorded episode of the WI Law in Action podcast from the UW Law Library, we talk with the outgoing and incoming editors-in-chief of the Wisconsin Law Review which celebrates its 100th anniversary next year. Olivia Radics (outgoing EIC) and Anya Gersoff (incoming EIC) discuss the history of the journal, its recent publications, symposia, and upcoming plans.
The Wisconsin Law Review was founded in 1920 and has been solely edited by law students since 1935. It is a general-interest journal that publishes six print issues a year and as well as an online supplement called Wisconsin Law Review Forward.
From Olivia Radics (outgoing EIC):
We spoke with excellent speakers over the past year in the areas of civil rights, administrative law, intellectual property, constitutional law, business law, among others. And I think all of them were compelling, but I will say I’ve enjoyed working with young scholars the most. The recent graduates who are starting out in legal academia, I’ve been very impressed by their diligence and their attention to detail and their enthusiasm. Getting published in the Law Review is a huge boost to their career and it’s such a privilege to assist them in their scholarly pursuits. And it’s also been a great pleasure to publish our very own student authors. This year we’ve published five student notes and comments. And one of our 3L associates, Brian Cawley, won the prestigious Burton Award for Legal Writing for his note, which is entitled, “Damning the Mekong: Project Finance’s Inability to Cure the Steep Costs of Hydropower Development in the Mekong River Basin.” (PDF)
From Anya Gersoff (incoming EIC):
So I think the first thing that people should keep an eye out for is Issue Four, which will be our first issue that we will be publishing as a new editorial board this fall. And that issue is a ‘new voices’ issue, which means we’re looking to publish anyone who hasn’t published an article before the first five years. Or this might be their first academic piece that they’re publishing. So the goal is to really help get new voices of scholarship into publications because we recognize how difficult it can be to break through that sort of barrier sometimes, but also how important it is for young scholars and young prospective academics to get published. So that’ll be our first issue coming up, our ‘new voices’ issue….
Then, in our next two issues, we’ll be publishing six different student notes or comments, and again, Olivia’s Board selected these, but I’m really excited about all of them. I think one of the first that we’ll publish will be… talking artificial intelligence. It is very current. [We’ll also have] a piece on Wisconsin’s partial veto, which coincidentally was a case that was just heard at the Wisconsin Supreme Court last month. So we’ve got a lot of really current student pieces that we’ll be publishing. And then I think my personal favorite article that will be coming out in Issue Five is an article on sports betting that my Board was lucky enough to select and get published in that coming issue. It’s really an interesting overview of what’s a continuing-to-develop area of law.