Georgetown Law Journal in United States

Georgetown Law Journal

The Georgetown Law Journal is headquartered at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. and has published more than 500 issues since its inception, as well as the widely used Annual Review of Criminal Procedure (ARCP). The Journal is currently, and always has been, run by law students.

Volume 1, Issue 1 was published in November 1912, under the supervision of Editor-in-Chief Eugene Quay. At the time, an annual subscription to the new Journal cost one dollar. The first article was titled “The 125th Anniversary of the Drafting of the Constitution of the United States.” In a three-paragraph statement of purpose, the editors of the new Journal proclaimed:

When a school has gathered to itself some thousand potential lawyers, its efforts in the line of literary endeavor should find some proper expression; when a law school has reached the rank to which Georgetown has attained, it should be represented by a review that would take a place as high; and when we scan the names that make up the list of Georgetown’s faculty and the roster of her alumni, we can see no room for fear but that a journal representing her would take its proper rank.

1 Geo. L.J. 50, 50 (1912).

Today, the Journal employs approximately 100 law students—about 50 in their graduating year who serve in editorial positions and 50 in intermediate years who serve as staff. The staff collect and check sources, performing technical edits and checking for typographical errors. The upperclass students are tasked with administering the Journal‘s daily operations.

An example of the Journal‘s work includes its Annual Review of Criminal Procedure, which has an annual distribution of over 20,000 copies. As a comprehensive survey of all criminal procedure in the federal courts, the ARCP is a useful resource in many district courts, U.S. Attorneys’ offices, the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a large number of law firms, and prison libraries.

Through this section of our website, you can discover how to obtain our copyright permission, view our masthead that lists current editors and staff, and obtain our contact information.