Consider whether Law & Society Review is an appropriate outlet for your research

Law & Society Review publishes work that is engaged with and motivated by theory and uses any of the methods from the social sciences broadly construed. Theoretical contributions will be considered, as well. Our readers are interdisciplinary scholars, most of whom combine an interest in legal phenomena with social science theories and empirical research. 

Browse recent issues of the journal

As an interdisciplinary journal, Law & Society Review does not expect that all articles will look the same; while some authors come from a discipline that structures articles according to defined sections (i.e. Literature Review, Methods and Data, Findings, and Conclusion), other authors may write in a way that reflects a more humanistic approach, such that relevant information is woven into the narrative of the manuscript. This range of disciplinary writing styles is acceptable to the journal.

Regardless of the structure, articles submitted to Law & Society Review should consider the following advice:

1. Since LSR is a general interest law and society journal, we ask that scholars frame their work to be of strong interest to a broad community of law and society scholars. This means asking research questions that will appeal to law and society scholars and couching the topic or study in debates that are well known to law and society scholars, often bridging individual subfields or disciplines. For example, a study of the police should also engage theories, debates, or concepts that are well-known and of interest to scholars not embedded in studies of criminology or criminal justice, such as business law scholars, cultural anthropologists, or disputing scholars, depending on the relevance of the research questions and findings to those subfields.  As a very simple guide, authors can assess whether their article is appropriate for a given journal by noting whether they cite works from that journal or similar journals, indicating that the author is engaging work “in the literature” relevant to that journal. In the case of LSR, this means citing LSR and Law & Social Inquiry, as well as perhaps: Annual Review of Law and Social Science; Studies in Law, Politics, and Society; Law & Policy; PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review; Law & History Review; Punishment & Society, etc. This broader framing expands readership, impact, and future engagement with your article, should it be published in LSR. The more you can demonstrate the broad appeal and relevance of your paper, particularly by tapping into theoretical discussions and making theoretical contributions of interest to a broad law and society audience, the better. 
2. Though Law & Society Review occasionally publishes articles making principally theoretical contributions, most papers appearing in the journal report on the analysis of some kind of data. While we do not expect a “Methods” section, a reader should be able to discern how data was collected and the nature of that data, from large data sets to ethnographic fieldnotes.
3. Similarly, data analysis and findings can be presented in a variety of ways. However, as you do so, keep the broad reading audience of LSR in mind. Often, we expect the data to speak for itself, whether we are presenting quantitative data or qualitative data. The story told by an ANOVA table showing p-values may be obvious to you but not to a reader from, say, cultural sociology. A series of long, block quotations from interviews or fieldnotes may provide the authentic voice of your interlocutors but is a lot to ask a demographer to follow and figure out what is important and what is not. Provide enough data to help the reader understand why you are drawing certain conclusions from it, but be gentle on your reader, as well, and provide them guidance along the way as you present your data and the questions it helps you to answer.
   
4. A concluding section  is a useful place to return the article’s focus on the broader sociolegal contributions it makes. It might also address limitations of the research or discuss unanswered questions, implications, and directions for future research.

Length

Law & Society Review will consider submissions between 7,000 and 12,500 words in length, exclusive of references, appendices and tables. The editor reserves the right to reject without review manuscripts that are longer than 12,500 words or shorter than 7,000 words. Abstracts should be no more than 200 words.

Format

All text, including notes and references, should be double spaced with 1-inch margins; 12 pt Times New Roman is the preferred font for text, notes and references. Please submit your manuscript as a Word document in a single file that contains all text, references, tables, and figures. To be clear, we do not want the figures or tables at the end of the manuscript, but rather included in the manuscript where the reader would naturally find them.

Style

The Law & Society Review conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition, and the in-text, author-date citation system. The Review uses American punctuation and spelling and relies on Webster’s Tenth Collegiate Dictionary for spelling, hyphenation, and word division.

General guidelines

The journal uses American punctuation and spelling.

Please use sentence case for the title of your article.

Please use en-dashes rather than hyphens to separate page and date ranges.

Use italics (not underlines) for titles and subtitles of published books, pamphlets, proceedings and collections, periodicals, and newspapers and sections of newspapers published separately (New York Times Book Review).

For names of authors, use full first name rather than initials, unless the author customarily uses only initials. 

Citations should be in author-date style with a full bibliographic reference list to follow which includes only those works cited within the paper. If necessary, additional footnotes may be added, but all citations are in-text. Please see Chicago Manual of Style’s citation guide.

Text citations

All citations should be included as parenthetical rather than footnote citations. Please use author-date style for citations. In the text, include the last name of the author(s), year of publication, and page number if necessary. It is not necessary to include further information, such as ed. or trans. in the in-text note. Note: quotations from or summaries of original qualitative data should also include parenthetical citations to the datasets, including fieldnotes and interview transcripts.

For example:

One source: 

Manby (2015b: 10) argues that it could be useful “for the citizenship debates to extend to Africa, and scholarship on autochthony and indigeneity in Africa to pay more attention to legal definitions of nationality and the process by which it is acquired, as well as the more nebulous question of how a sense of belonging and community is created.”

Ross and Foley (1987: 324) point out that new laws imposing harsh sanctions are often evaded.

OR

New laws imposing harsh sanction are often evaded (Ross and Foley 1987: 324).

Multiple sources:

The process of bringing legal claims frequently empowers lawyers over affected parties or divides social movements (Albiston 2011; McCann and Silverstein 1998; Scheingold 2004).

If you refer to more than one source by the same author published in the same year, differentiate as follows:

New laws imposing harsh sanction are often evaded (Ross and Foley 1987a; 1987b).

If the author’s name has already been mentioned in the text, insert reference in parentheses after the name.  For example:

Peters (1986: 445) describes some divorces as “no-fault.”

For three or more authors, cite as follows:

As Schwartz et al. (1975: 239) have written . . .

OR

The theory is widely accepted . . . (see Schwartz et al. 1975).

Newspaper articles:         

If you are referring to a news story with a byline, list the item in the References and refer to in text as you would any authored item. If you are citing a story without a byline, refer to as follows:

 . . . from the Niagara River (Buffalo Evening News, March 1, 1974, p. 2)

 OR

. . . according to the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader (May 15, 1974, p. 14)

Web pages:

If no person is given as author, the owner of the site may stand in for author:

A recent study of resolution comparison (Federation of American Scientists) . . .           

Government reports and documents:

 If no person is given as author, refer to by agency or department.

Government data (U.S. Census Bureau 1999: 237) . . .

Cases:          

Cases should be cited in the text as follows:

            . . . in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918) . . .

OR

            … in the Commerce Clause (Hammer v. Dagenhart 1918) …

Statutes: 

All statutes should be cited in the text as follows:

Under the Labor Management Relations Act (1947) …

OR

There is renewed interest in the Commerce Clause (U.S. Const. art. I, sec. 8).

Reference list

For items with two authors, separate the authors with the word “and” rather than an ampersand; the second author should be listed by first name, then middle initial (if used), followed by last name.  Noun forms such as editor, translator, volume, and edition are abbreviated, but verb forms such as edited by and translated by are spelled out. Please note that each entry in the reference list must correspond to a work cited in the text.

Journal or magazine articles: 

Last Name, First Name. Year. "Title of Article." Journal Name volume number (issue): page range. (Give month or issue number if each is separately paginated.)

Mor, Sagit and Rina B. Pikkel. 2019. “Disability, Rights, and the Construction of Sexuality in Tort Claims.” Law & Society Rev. 53 (4): 413–50.

Galanter, Marc. 2004. “The Vanishing Trial: An Examination of Trials and Related Matters in Federal and State Courts.” J. of Empirical Legal Studies 1(3): 459–570.

Brill, Steven and James Lyons. 1986. “The Not-So-Simple Crisis.” American Lawyer (May): 12–15.

Note: In journal titles, the words “Review” and “Journal” are normally abbreviated as “Rev.” and “J.” respectively.

Books:

Last Name, First Name. Year. Title of Book. City: Publisher.

Lerner, Melvin J. 1980. Belief in a Just World. New York: Plenum.

Keck, Margaret E. and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Klugg, Heinz and Sally Merry. 2016. The New Legal Realism: Volume 2: Studying Law Globally. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter in edited volume: 

Author Last Name, First Name. Year. "Chapter title. In Volume Title, edited by editor’s first and last name, ed., page range. City, State: Publisher.

Allen, Danielle. 2010. “Anonymous: On Silence and the Public Sphere.” In Speech and Silence in American Law, edited by Austin Sarat, 106–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nielsen, Laura Beth. 2010. “The Need for Multi-Method Approaches in Empirical Legal Research.” In The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research, edited by Peter Cane and Herbert Kritzer, 951–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Newspaper articles:         

List only those newspaper articles with a byline cited in the text by the author’s name, otherwise list by name of newspaper:

Choe, Sang-Hun. 2017. “Deal with Japan on Former Sex Slaves Failed Victims, South Korean Panel Says.” The New York Times, December 27.

New York Times. 2002. “In Texas, Ad Heats Up Race for Governor.” July 30.

Web pages:

For online sources other than periodicals, include as much of the following as can be determined: author of the content by Author last name, first name. Year. Title of the page. Title or owner of the site, Web address [URL], date accessed.

Jones, Marion. 2000. “What to Expect in Law School.” Nearby University Law School, http://www.nearbylaw.edu/prospective (accessed December 21, 2000).

Smith, John. N.d. “Rules for Submitting your Application.” Nearby University Law School, http://www.nearbylaw.edu/admissions (accessed May 30, 2003).

Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees (2000) “Evanston Public Library Strategic Plan, 2000-2010: A Decade of Outreach, “Evanston Public Library, http://www.epl.org/library/strategic-plan-00.html (accessed July 18, 2002).

If no person or group is given as author, the owner of the site may stand in for author:

Federation of American Scientists. 2001.  Resolution comparison:  Reading License Plates and Headlines, http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/resolve5.htm (accessed June 12, 2003).

Government reports & documents:

If no person is given as author, refer to by agency or department.

Institute/Department/Agency/Author [higher institution first if needed for identification]. Year. Title of Work. Place of Publication:  publication office. 

National Institute of Mental Health. 1982. Television and Behavior:  Ten Years of Scientific Progress.  DHHS Publication No. ADM 82-1195.  Washington, DC:  GPO.

Donnelly, Warren H. and Barbara Rather. 1976.  International Proliferation of Nuclear Technology.  Report prepared for the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs.  94th Cong., 2d sess.  Committee Print 15.

U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1975. Median Gross Rent by Counties of the United States, 1970.  Prepared by the Geography Division in cooperation with the Housing Division, Bureau of the Census.  Washington, DC.

U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs. 1964. Background Material on Mutual Defense and Development Programs:  Fiscal Year 1965.  88th Cong., 2d sess.  Committee Print.

U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations. 1956. The Mutual Security Act of 1956.  84th Cong., 2d sess.  S. Rept. 2273.

Conference or meeting papers:

Last Name, First Name. Year. “Title of Paper.”  Presented at Event, Place, date if available.

Burstein, Paul. 1987. “Race, Religion, Sex and National Origin:  Barriers to Mobility.”  Presented at Conference on Longitudinal Research on Trial Courts, State University of New York at Buffalo, Aug. 9.

Unpublished papers:

Last Name, First Name. Year. “Title of Paper.”  Unpublished paper, Author’s Institution, Location, Place, date if available.

Richardson, David. 1987. “Lawyers and Doctors.”  Unpublished paper, Institute for Research on Legal Phenomena, New York, 7 Oct.

Working papers: 

Last Name, First Name. Year. “Title of Paper.”  Organization and Working Paper Series (including number if applicable), location of organization, date.

Sarat, Austin and William L. F. Felstiner. 1986. “Legal Realism in Lawyer-Client Communications.”  American Bar Foundation Working Paper Series Paper # 8723, Chicago.

Dissertations:        

Last Name, First Name. Year. “Title of Dissertation.”  Degree level, Department or Field, University.

Smith, James. 1983. “The Legal Profession in Ghana.”  Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, Nearby University.

Cases:          

All cases cited in text should be listed separately under “Cases Cited” following the References.  When the citation is not in parentheses, give the name in full; when in parentheses, abbreviate according to the style set forth in The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation.  Some examples are:

U.S. Supreme Court:

United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).

Federal Court of Appeals:

Environmental Defense Fund v. EPA, 465 F.2d 528 (D.C. Cir. 1972).

State Courts:

Roybal v. Martinez, 92 N.M. 630, 593 P.2d 71 (Ct. App. 1979).

Schiffman v. Corsi, 182 Misc. 498, 50 N.Y.S.2d 897 (Sup. Ct. 1944).

Statutes: 

All statutes cited in text should be listed separately under “Statutes Cited” following the References and Cases Cited.  When not cited in parentheses, give the name in full; when in parentheses, abbreviate according to the style set forth in A Uniform System of Citation.  Some examples are:

National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 102 U.S.C. 4332 (1970).

Parking Authority Law, Pa. Stat. Ann. tit. 53, 342 (Purdon 1974 and Supp. 1985).

Please send any style questions to Ryan Cadrette, Managing Editor, Law & Society Review: lsr@lawandsociety.org

Data

If your manuscript relies on original data collection from living human subjects, or other types of research that typically need research ethics approval from your institutional review board or research ethics board, please add a footnote or a sentence in the main text of your manuscript (in the data and methods section) that your project received approval from the relevant review board (or that you received a formal waiver or exemption from such board). For review purposes, the name of the board or the university/center/organization with which it is associated can be anonymized.

Submitting your paper

When you are ready to submit your paper, see instructions on how to submit here.

Book reviews

Law & Society Review does not accept unsolicited book reviews. Book reviews are by invite only and should only be submitted after instructed to by the editorial team.

Special issue proposals

Law & Society Review does not accept unsolicited special issue proposals.