The University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where I am a faculty member, has announced the launch of a new student-edited law journal: the “University of Pittsburgh Journal of Health Law and Policy.”

I have some comments about student-edited law reviews generally, below the jump.

Way back in 2001, not long after I joined the faculty at Pitt Law, a couple of enthusiastic intellectual property law students approached me with the proposal to found a specialty journal focused on intellectual property and technology law. As a relatively new faculty member, and in that era (the early days of Internet law and earlier days of biotechnology law), I thought: this would be a great way to put Pitt Law on the proverbial map of relevant and timely legal scholarship. I worked with the students and shepherded their proposal through the faculty; the “Journal of Technology Law and Policy” (now R.I.P.) was born.

In my excitement, I shared this development at conferences with colleagues and mentors. One of those conversations in particular stands out. I mentioned the news to a senior colleague who had mentored me through my job search and who knew (and knows) Pitt and Pittsburgh well. Another specialty journal in IP and tech law coming! At Pitt! The response: “Another one?”

None of this should cast a specific shadow on Pitt’s new health law journal. It is (or will be, when it starts publishing, months from now) the product of months of effort by a small number of passionate and thoughtful law students. May their efforts bear fruit!

The specific instance prompts a general question: is this the time for expanding the roster of student-edited law journals? For expanding the roster of law journals generally? If the AI-era is helping writers produce a superabundance of “scholarly” content, should the publishing environment expand accordingly? Or should law schools and law journals be more discerning, both about how much they publish, the quality of what they publish, and whether they publish at all? In this moment and looking ahead, how do journals make sense – for students, for scholars, for readers (other scholars, practitioners, judges and policymakers, others)?

I will remind everyone that another Pitt Law colleague, the now-retired Bernard (Bernie) Hibbitts, called what turned out to be a premature end to the law review system way back in 1996, when the modern Internet was in its proverbial infancy. Was he wrong, or was he simply ahead of his time? Or a little of both? Read Bernard J. Hibbitts, “Last Writes? Reassessing the Law Review in the Age of Cyberspace,” 71 N.Y.Y. L. Rev. 615 (1996).