Scholarship@WashULaw
Political Ideology and the Law Review Selection Process
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
Publication Title
American Law and Economics Review
Abstract
We investigate the role that political ideology plays in the selection process for articles in law reviews. To do so, we match data on the political ideology of student editors from 15 top law reviews from 1990 to 2005 to data on the political ideology of the authors of accepted articles. We find that law reviews with a higher share of conservative editors accept a higher share of articles written by conservative authors. We then investigate potential explanations for this pattern. One possibility is that editors have a preference for publishing articles written by authors that share their ideology. Another possibility is that editors are objectively better at assessing the contribution of articles written by authors that share their ideology. We find evidence that the relationship between editor and author ideology is driven by editors' greater ability to screen articles written by authors that share their ideology.
Keywords
Academia, Publication Process, Political Ideology, Law Professor, Law Review
Publication Citation
Adam Chilton, Jonathan Masur and Kyle Rozema, Political Ideology and the Law Review Selection Process, 22 Am. L. & Econ. Rev. 211 (2020)
Repository Citation
Rozema, Kyle; Chilton, Adam; and Masur, Jonathan S., "Political Ideology and the Law Review Selection Process" (2020). Scholarship@WashULaw. 98.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_scholarship/98