A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also provide a scholarly analysis of emerging law concepts from various topics. Law reviews are generated in almost all law bodies/institutions worldwide. However, in recent years, some have claimed that the traditional influence of law reviews is declining.
In the United States and Canada, most law journals are housed at individual law schools and are edited by students, not professional scholars. North American law schools usually have "flagship" law reviews and several secondary journals dedicated to specific topics. For example, Harvard Law School's flagship journal is the Harvard Law Review, and it has 16 other secondary journals such as the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology and the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. Membership and editorial positions on law journals, especially flagship law reviews, is competitive and traditionally confers honor and prestige. Selection for law review membership is usually based on a combination of students' grades, their performance on a short article-writing competition, and an examination on Bluebook legal citation rules.
The primary function of a law review is to publish scholarship in the field of law. Law reviews publish lengthy, comprehensive treatments of subjects (referred to as "articles"), that are generally written by law professors, judges, or legal practitioners. The shorter pieces, attached to the articles, commonly called "notes" and "comments," are written by law student "members" of the law review.
Law review articles often express the thinking of specialists or experts with regard to problems, in a legal setting, with potential solutions to those problems. Historically, law review articles have been influential in the development of the law; they have been frequently cited as persuasive authority by the courts almost worldwide.