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The Sad Decline of the Michigan Law Review's Books Issue

By Jack M. Balkin

I used to look forward to the annual issue of the Michigan Law Review on "Survey of Books Related to the Law." A real service to scholars I thought. No longer. My area of scholarship is constitutional theory and as far as contheory is concerned the attitude of the last few "Books" issues seems to be: we don't care anymore. The list of significant contheory books not reviewed in MLR has become quite long. Indeed, MLR doesn't seem to be trying -- no longer are there sections dedicated to contheory or even conlaw. Consider some of the better contheory books to be published over the last few years:

Jack Balkin, What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said (2005)

Sotirios Barber and James E. Fleming, Constitutional Interpretation: The Basic Questions (2007)

James E. Fleming, Securing Constitutional Democracy (2006)

Mark Graber, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (2006)

Sanford Levinson, Our Undemocratic Constitution (2006)

Walter F. Murphy, Constitutional Democracy (2006)

Keith E. Whittington, Political Foundations of Judicial Supremacy (2007)

And yes I could go on from here and no I'm not trying just to list contributors to this blog! But it's really a shame. Perhaps the "Books" issue had to cut back on the number of pages, etc., but dissing contheory does not seem to me to be a good way to carry it out.

And what books related to conlaw do they choose to review in the latest (April 2008) issue? Hint: not Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency (2007) or Charlie Savage's Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency (2007). No, the last two issues have featured scholars with the last name "Posner" and the current issue leads with "Yoo."

A sad state of affairs.

Full post as published by Balkinization on April 26, 2008 (boomark / email).