Law Review Topics?

[nomargfan5]

I recently made Law Review and have been struggling to come up with a specific topic to write about. Besides writing about something that interests you, what is the best way to go about finding a topic unique enough to write a thorough comment about? Thanks!

[botbot]

I.

1) Look at recent legislation.
2) Find legislation that changed something (anything).
3) Write about how the law has evolved over time and predict how the recent legislation has changed things.

II.

1) Find issue where similarly ranked courts are in dispute that the SC has yet to consider. (works best on state level, academics work federal courts hard).
2) Write about how the issue is handled in other jurisdictions and how you think it will be handled by the SC.

III.

1) Find federal legislation with a compliance requirement deadline approaching.  Do a state-by-state compliance analysis.

IV.

1) IP.  Still the easiest topic to find unresolved issues.  Get specific.

[Matthies]

Decent suggestions, but avoid number II at all costs.

Do NOT write about something that is likely to come before the USSC within the next year if you’re writing for publication. Two reasons: you want your article to be long lasting and you want it to remain relevant. Trust me on this. Writing any article of something pending or likely pending on cert is a bad, bad idea.

You run the risk that if the court decides contrary to your premise, or on grounds different from your premise, your article is moot. Don’t do this. Its hella work to produce more than a note and trust me sucks ass when the side you came down on is not the side the court came down on. Avoid that by avoiding cases pending for cert, accepted for cert, or likely to go in the next 15 months.
 
I had two articles torpedoed like this, a great article on Whales and Sonar and the APA/NEPA until Scalia got ahold of that and said Naval sonar training was an emergency exception to NEPA because we are at war. Yea, we really need to go banging away with whale ear splitting sonar around the Galapagos Islands looking for Taliban or Iraqi submarines. 

Another good source, ask your profs.

[botbot]

Yeah - as noted, I primarily meant state issues for II.

Although there are a few issues that the USSC seems happy to let the circuits piddle with that might work for such an article.

[vap]

To complement the excellent suggestions by the other posters, you may want to look at recent reported decisions from courts of appeals in your circuit.  Any three-member panel with a dissent will likely have an interesting issue with two reasonable viewpoints

[goaliechica]

To complement the excellent suggestions by the other posters, you may want to look at recent reported decisions from courts of appeals in your circuit.  Any three-member panel with a dissent will likely have an interesting issue with two reasonable viewpoints

I find the BNA Reporters helpful for this. They report recently decided cases by subject matter (Crim, Tech, etc.) and give helpful summaries that you can skim through easily.