April 13, 2006

posted by Daniel J. Solove

Kansas doesn't like "FSM" either:

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/living/education/14331100.htm

Without spoiling the surprise, my favorite part of the abstract is the last two words. Classic.

I actually have read this article. I particularly enjoyed the section titled... well, Eh Nonymous has already pointed you in the right direction. I'm eager to see which law review has the mettle to publish this.

Depending on time it was submitted and the time at which the editor assigned to it looked at it, there is nothing particularly strange about that. That is, without making any comment on this particular article, I don't think it's that difficult for a journal to figure out that an article isn't something they're going to want to publish in twenty-five minutes.

Nothing new here. I'd reject it even faster. Points for mild entertainment. Author could have chosen a more informative title.

I rejected many other pieces much faster than 25 minutes. Kudus to Kan. L. Rev. for actually spending 25 minutes before rejecting this one.

We received the article in question and rejected it in a minute or so. Only a non-state-supported school can afford the privilege of publishing it in an election year. Go for it, kids at plush private schools!

Maybe Kansas was just full?

The current AE's comment is pretty interesting. I wonder how many law review boards make publication decisions based on anticipated political reaction...

As for the article, I printed it out to read after checking out the lucid and neat introduction. Seems eminently worth accepting...

Oh, come on Current AE: an election year? Have a little bit of courage! That's pathetic.

Actually, one word does suffice for this article... and that's ... "yuck." Nothing new said about the 1st A, just shock value and cheap gimmicky marketing.

On the other hand, it might be cool if this article gets accepted somewhere. That way you could drop a footnote into your article that could also function as an insult!

My favorite was a submission from a full-tenured proffessor that was only one paragraph long (it was a minimalist treatment of some issue in native American law).

I posted it on our office message board for laughs.

Oh yeah. It had a couple typos.

Ouch.

Why is everyone posting anonymous comments? What's so bad about the word fuck? The article addresses this very dialogue, and questions popular culture for this type of--forgive me for borrowing from the article--taboo treatment of the word.

Read the article. Fuck is not nearly as bad as cunt or ni**er (I can't even write that last one!). Needless to say, I feel very fortunate that I don't go to a law school like S. Carolina, Kansas, or Harvard--all of whom seem to believe they are somehow above fuck. Reminds me of the NYU law student who reportedly asked Justice Scalia (during a lecture Q&A) if he sodomizes his wife.

It took me longer than 25 minutes to reject this piece, but that's not a compliment. The problem wasn't the language, but its limited theoretical understanding and poor argument. The author claims that it's 'irrational' to treat certain words as taboo, but forgets that the taboo nature of certain words gives them their social meaning. If "fuck" no longer inspired offense--if "Fuck the Draft" meant nothing more than "I Strongly Oppose the Draft"--no one would *use* it anymore. It's one thing to believe that their shouldn't be a first amendment exception for fighting words, or even to ask why copulation in particular should take on this social taboo. It's something else to think that no word should be more controversial than any other, and I don't believe anyone who thinks seriously about language can hold that position.

Is it really a question of "mettle?" The article reads like a lighthearted, sarcastic joke rather than an excellent piece of serious scholarship with a "controversial" title. I look at very few 80-pagers and say "I could have written that in a weekend," but this is one of them.

Too content-free for a real law review.
Too long for a pop culture outlet.
Too inane for the Green Bag.
This thing deserves to rot on BePress.

Dear Mr. Current AE (articles editor?) & Mr. O (Terrel Owens?):

Since you seem to have no problem being overly-critical of proven scholars published in top law publications including Texas L. Rev., Ohio St. J. on Disp. Reol., and Legal Times, I'm curious to see what brilliant articles the both of you have written.

Also, since Mr. O makes the suggestion that "Fuck" should "rot on BePress," what is your response to "Fuck" being the most downloaded ExpressO article last week?

Mr. AE, while I respectfully dissent with your analysis of Fairman's argument, I applaud you for giving reasons behind your assertion, unlike Mr. O.

Just curious.....what grade did it get?

Sheesh. With comments from self-professed members of the various school reviews on this topic, no wonder the phrase "law review" elicits such eye-rolling condescension among practicing attorneys.

The sort of hide-bound, pretentious, self-righteous statements that have been made so far by those ostensibly in control of the editorial decisions of the journals are not at all encouraging either of their ability or willingness to recognize the pedagogic value of humor or, even more worrying, deviate in any manner from the very sort of institutional taboos (within academe among other places) that this paper addresses.

Cheers to Prof. Fairman and jeers to both the law review in question and the self-professed reviewers that commented above.

If you see Kay..
See you in tea....