Hayne, K M --- "A Foreword to the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition of Melbourne University Law Review" [2007] MelbULawRw 1; (2007) 31(1) Melbourne University Law Review 1
Foreword to the
50th Anniversary Edition of
the
Melbourne University Law
Review
FOREWORD
THE HON JUSTICE K M HAYNE AC QC[∗]
Well before the first edition of the Melbourne University Law Review (‘Review’) was published, there were those who predicted the end of the student-edited law review.[1] And since 1957, many others have made similar predictions.[2] They have pointed to the difficulty of having students choose and then edit scholarly work. What skills do students bring to these tasks, the critics ask. The students may learn from their experience, but are they not unsuited to the tasks? And does the emergence of new fields of legal scholarship like the economic analysis of law and critical legal studies mean, as has been suggested,[3] that there are some kinds of legal writing that student editors can ‘barely comprehend’? Debates of these kinds have been continued in the pages of this Review.[4]
Fifty years ago, the then Dean of the Melbourne Law School, Professor Zelman Cowen, established the Review as the first Australian studentedited law review modelled on the Harvard Law Review. Contrary to the predictions of those who have foreseen the end of journals like this Review, it has survived. It has played, and continues to play, an important part in publishing work that is valuable to those who study and practise law. Why is that so?
This Review serves, and will continue to serve, the purposes of those who set it up, and the needs of academic and professional lawyers, when it publishes work warranting the description of firstrate legal scholarship. Such work is thoughtful. It eschews the superficial, and confronts the deeper and more difficult questions presented by the subject. It provokes the reader to think about that subject and provides the tools with which the reader may consider the validity of the author’s arguments and conclusions. Of course, authors and editors must combine to ensure that the work is presented clearly, avoiding the many traps that wait to snare the legal writer. As the Foreword to the first edition of this Review’s Australian Guide to Legal Citation records,[5] one of the deeper traps, for both authors and editors, is the ‘drab, Latinate, plethoric, euphemistic style’ condemned by Judge Richard Posner.[6]
But important as issues of style and presentation are, the critical test for any law review is, and always will be, whether the material that it publishes meets the requirements of good scholarship. If it does not, it should not be published. If it does not, the law review that publishes the material fails its readers and all of those who stand behind it — its founders, its past and present editors.
Anniversaries, especially when they are golden, provoke reminiscence and congratulation. But an anniversary, like the one that this edition of the Review marks, should provoke deeper reflection than may be provided by the reminiscences of those who participated in the work of the Review decades ago. That deeper reflection will consider what has been done in the past, but it must focus upon what the future should hold for this Review.
It would be contrary to human experience if hindsight did not suggest that at least some of what has appeared in the Review over the last 50 years may now be said not to have met the exacting standards that must be met. But the Review has survived and prospered because those exceptions have been rare. The challenge for those who will take charge of the Review’s work in future years will be to maintain the Review as a journal that publishes firstrate legal scholarship. If that is done, the author of the Foreword to the centenary edition of the Review will have as pleasurable a task as does this author in marking the milestone, offering congratulations to those associated with this particular edition, and wishing the succeeding generations of editors success in the future.
[∗] BA, LLB (Hons) (Melb), BCL (Oxon); Justice of the High Court of Australia; former Editor of the Melbourne University Law Review.
[1] See, eg, Fred Rodell, ‘Goodbye to Law Reviews’ (1936) 23 Virginia Law Review 38.
[2] See, eg, James Lindgren, ‘An Author’s Manifesto’ (1994) 61 University of Chicago Law Review 527.
[3] Chief Judge Richard A Posner, ‘The Future of the Student-Edited Law Review’ (1995) 47 Stanford Law Review 1131, 1133.
[4] Justice Michael Kirby, ‘Welcome to Law Reviews’ [2002] MelbULawRw 1; (2002) 26 Melbourne University Law Review 1; John Gava, ‘Law Reviews: Good for Judges, Bad for Law Schools?’ [2002] MelbULawRw 29; (2002) 26 Melbourne University Law Review 560.
[5] (1st ed, 1998).
[6] Judge Richard A Posner, ‘Goodbye to the Bluebook’ (1986) 53 University of Chicago Law Review 1343, 1349.