Legal Commentary

Slate and Law Professors

Has anyone else noticed the enormous amount of writing done by law professors for Slate? Even forgetting features like the annual  Supreme Court wrap-up gabfest.  I think it?s safe to say that it has become America?s leading law review. In the past year, Slate has run stories by Bruce Ackerman, Ahkil Amar, Frank Bowman, Bill Eskridge, David Fontana, Richard Thompson Ford, Bennett Gershman, Jack Goldsmith, Rick Hasen Orin Kerr, Neal Katyal, Marty Lederman, Eric Posner, Jamin Raskin, Jim Ryan and Kenji Yoshino (and I?m sure I missed a few too). And that doesn?t count the extensive writing by Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick on the Supreme Court and other legal issues, or the Convictions blog, where a large number of law professors (including Jack Balkin, David Baron and Doug Kmiec among many others). In total, Slate has published more articles by legal academics than any law review, and because of the blog, probably more total words (I haven?t counted or anything ? I?m just eyeballing) by law professors in the past year than any other publication. Further, articles by law professors far outnumber any other group of academics (and maybe all other academics total ? there are a few pieces by academic economists, but that?s really it)

This, of course, is not evidence of a trend ? Slate has published writing by law professors for a number of years. But even so it is striking. And it raises a number of questions.

First, why is Slate so interested in articles by law professors?

My guess is that this is driven by cost pressures on magazines. The collapse of the advertising market, the rise of blogs and the general fragmentation of available media has put a great deal of pressure on opinion magazines ? they are losing money hand over first. Although it isn?t encumbered by print costs like some of its money-losing competitors, Slate needs to produce lots of content for not that much money. I have no idea what Slate pays law professors to write for it, but my guess is not that much, if anything. Given that we have, you know, jobs with salaries, the value of writing of writing for a popular publication probably does not come in the fee by the word ? it comes from getting ideas out into a more popular forum than law reviews. The cost probably doesn?t exceed the cost of getting a 23-year-old intern to write things, and so it makes sense for Slate.  (That is, if articles by law professors are better than those by 23-year-old interns, which I?m just going to hope is usually true.)

Second, why so many law professors and not as much from the rest of the academy? Part of it must spring from the fact that Slate is, for the most part, a public affairs magazine and the law is obviously a big part of that. But that doesn?t do enough work ? it covers politics without much writing by political scientists, wars without much coverage by experts in military history or international relations, health care without much writing by medical school professors or health economists and so on. Any thoughts?