We are pleased to announce the winners of The Yale Law Journal's Prison Law Writing Contest. We received approximately 1,500 responses from people all across the United States. We are grateful to those who shared their experiences, personal reflections, and insight with us. The winning essays will be published in The Yale Law Journal in the spring of 2013. 

Recent Media Coverage of YLJ Content

Legal Ethics Forum highlighted a pair of recent Yale Law Journal Online essays: Lawrence Fox’s The Gang of Thirty-Three: Taking the Wrecking Ball to Client Loyalty, and James W. Jones and Anthony E. Davis’s In Defense of a Reasoned Dialogue about Law Firms and Their Sophisticated Clients. The essays debate the merits of proposed “sophisticated client” amendments to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

Legal Theory Blog recommended Edward K. Cheng’s forthcoming essay, Reconceptualizing the Burden of Proof, which argues that characterizing the burden of proof as an absolute probability threshold is wrong and views it instead as a probability ratio. A draft of the essay is available on SSRN.

Legal Theory Blog also ordered readers to “know [W.N.] Hohfeld” because his “typology of rights from his book Fundamental Legal Conceptions is, well, fundamental.” As background reading, the blog assigned two YLJ articles: Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 26 YALE L.J. 710 (1917), and Walter Wheeler Cook, Hohfeld’s Contribution to the Science of Law, 28 YALE L.J. 721 (1918).

Bleacher Report brought YLJ content to a new audience in a profile of Supreme Court Justice Byron White’s career in football and law. The article directed readers to Paul Tagliabue’s A Tribute to Byron White, written in 2003 after the death of Justice White.

An article published in the Michigan Law Review found that YLJ content is among the most cited in legal scholarship. Of the hundred most-cited legal articles of all time, eighteen were published in YLJ. Of the top hundred articles of the last twenty years, seventeen graced YLJ’s pages.

Alumni News

The third-year editors of Volume 121 graduated in May and published their final issue this month. The Volume 122 editorial board congratulates them and wishes them great success in their future endeavors.

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Recent Media Coverage of YLJ Content

A Yale Law Journal Online essay on the prevalence of "dissentals," or dissents from denial of rehearing en banc, by Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and James Burnham made a splash in April, with coverage by Above the Law, How Appealing, the Federalist Society’s blog, Laboratorium, Volokh Conspiracy, D.C. Circuit Review, and others.

Election Law Blog highlighted the most recent issue of The Yale Law Journal, which includes an article, several features, and a comment discussing redistricting, the “one person, one vote” principle, and criminal disenfranchisement.

Writing for the New York Times Economix blog, Bruce Bartlett recommended Michael Graetz’s 2002 article, 100 Million Unnecessary Returns: A Fresh Start for the U.S. Tax System, which lays out a radical plan for income tax reform. The New Yorker discussed Sanford Levinson’s seminal 1989 essay, The Embarrassing Second Amendment. The Atlantic strongly recommended James Forman, Jr.’s 2004 article, Juries and Race in the Nineteenth Century. And Slate covered in detail a recent Yale Law Journal Online essay by David Keenan, Deborah Jane Cooper, David Lebowitz, and Tamar Lerer, Why Existing Professional Responsibility Measures Cannot Protect Against Prosecutorial Misconduct.

YLJ Prison Law Writing Contest 

The Yale Law Journal Prison Law Writing Contest has received attention from academics, advocates, and many others. Please follow the Journal on Twitter and Facebook for updates on the contest. 

Alumni News

Two Journal alumni, Nicholas Katzenbach and Judge Louis H. Pollak, passed away this month. Mr. Katzenbach, a former Article Editor of the Journal and a civil rights leader, served in President John F. Kennedy’s Administration and as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Attorney General. Judge Pollak, a former Editor-in-Chief, served as dean of Yale Law School before his appointment to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Judge Pollack was also a member of the legal team representing the plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education. We mourn their passing and thank them for their service to the Journal and to the country.

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