OUR DEMOCRATIC REVIEW PROCESS

At Harvard CR-CL, we take great pride in our democratic review process. Our journal was founded during the Civil Rights Movement on the principle that power over legal scholarship should never be concentrated in the hands of the few. To this day, our journal maintains similar practices for article selection as we established upon our founding in 1966. Maintaining such democratic principles takes a great deal of effort and participation from our 100-plus-member editorial board, which often means that our article selection timeline is longer and later than those of our peer journals. We appreciate your patience as we move through this process, and we encourage you to read the descriptions below to familiarize yourself with what to expect when you submit your article to CR-CL. We will do our best to keep you informed about where we currently are in the process, and we hope that the transparency offered here helps mitigate the uncertainty surrounding our review procedures. 

OUTSIDE ARTICLES

The Outside Articles team includes over sixty editors who review, select, and substantively edit articles from law professors, SJD students, activists, and legal practitioners. We open our submissions window twice a year, once in January and another in August. Articles proceed through our selection process in four stages. First, one or more members of our Outside Articles team reads each submission, checking for clarity, novelty, and fit with CR-CL’s mission. Articles may be “screened out” at this stage, or they may advance to an in-depth review by two of our Article Selection Editors. The Article Selection Editors thoroughly assess each article to identify outstanding progressive scholarship—these are articles that often advance novel approaches to pressing legal issues relevant to civil rights and civil liberties, and are well-reasoned and accessible to a wide audience. Articles that receive the highest scores from our Article Selection Editors advance to a committee review, where they are discussed and debated by a team of Article Selection Editors and one Executive Managing Editor. These committees vote to advance articles to the final stage of our review: presentation and discussion at our Article Selection Board (ASB) Meeting. This meeting gathers together our entire Editorial Board of over 100 editors, who vote at the end of the discussion to give articles offers of publication. Historically, this vote has been ranked-choice, with the top three to four articles receiving offers.

We recognize that many authors juggle competing timetables and offers. Our editors work as quickly as they can during our article selection periods to accelerate our procedures. We also welcome communications from authors who submit articles, including information about other offers and deadlines, so that we can reach a publication decision as quickly as possible.

STUDENT WRITING

The Student Writing team is made up of around twelve Student Writing Editors (SWEs), two Executive Managing Editors (EMEs), and the Editor-in-Chief for Student Writing (EIC). When you submit your article to us, it undergoes two stages of review. First, one or more members of our Student Writing team conduct a high-level review of the submission to ensure that it fits within CR-CL’s mission. Next, two different SWEs review each article in greater depth, analyzing its novel contributions to progressive scholarship, the quality of the writing, and the cogency of the arguments. The next step in the process is our Student Writing Meeting, where each SWE presents the articles that they reviewed to the entire group, and other editors on the Student Writing team have the opportunity to ask questions. Following the Student Writing Meeting, each member of the Student Writing team ranks their top ten or so articles, and the articles with the most points advance to our full Editorial Board review at the Article Selection Board (ASB) meeting. This meeting is conducted in the same manner as that of Outside Articles: the entire Editorial Board of over 100 students gathers together, and a member of the Student Writing team presents each of the articles that have advanced. The presentation of each article is followed by the opportunity for all editors to ask questions, and after all articles are presented, the full board engages in discussion about the articles presented. Following the meeting, each member of the Editorial Board ranks their top articles, and the two to three articles with the most support are selected for publication.

ONLINE WRITING

The Online Writing team is made up of over twenty Online Writing Editors (OWEs), two Managing Editors (MEs), four Executive Managing Editors (EMEs), and the Editor-in-Chief for Online Writing (EIC). We have two sub-teams: (1) the Forum, and (2) the Blog. All members of the Online Writing team, however, participate in the Forum’s democratic review process.

Forum submissions undergo a thorough review to ensure that they comport with CR-CL’s mission and publication standards. Our EMEs conduct in-depth reviews of each submitted article, including (but not limited to) its novelty, clarity of argument and prose, contribution to progressive and radical scholarship, and more. After their review, we discuss submitted articles with the entire Online Writing team, of which members can review each piece, ask questions, provide input, and arrive at an informed decision regarding the submission. Because of the Forum’s abbreviated publication and rolling acceptance timelines, the entire CR-CL Editorial Board does not convene at an Article Selection Board (ASB) meeting to review submissions. Rather, we conduct an internal democratic review in a manner similar to the Outside Articles and Student Writing teams, where the full Online Writing team discusses and votes on articles initially flagged for publication by the EMEs. Following said review, each member of the Online Writing team votes on submissions.

Our team understands that authors might be facing competing offers and deadlines. We welcome communications about offers and deadlines so that we can ensure we provide you with a timely publication decision.