Law Students

Picking a Note or Comment Topic

By Casebook Sherpa

For those working on a Journal or Law Review this year, at least at our school, picking a Note or Comment topic is the hot to do item right now (in addition, of course, to those ever exciting pull assignments). Your selection is a big deal. You’ll be immersing yourself in this topic for a semester at least (perhaps more if your submission is chosen for publication) and you’ll discuss it with employers. So it should be good. Right?

Emerging issues of course are always hot. The Supreme Court’s gun decision (Keller it’s Heller, sorry about that) raised the issue of whether the 2nd Amendment will be fully incorporated to the states. What’s the likelihood of that happening? Then you can do a casenote on just that case or on litigation coming up through the Circuits.

Conflicts between courts – federal vs. federal, state vs. federal, etc – are always good. You can assess the weight each court gives to certain precedent and policy considerations. If two circuits disagree, that’s a big deal and could portend Supreme Court review in the future.

What about those topics that deal with conflicting rights and duties? Particularly those of the constitutional or fundamental rights variety. If gay marriage is sanctioned by the state and is a right to citizens can a can a minister who refuses to marry a homosexual couple based on religious objection to homosexual marriage be held liable? Probably not at this point, but there are some good issues embedded in there that suggest otherwise.

Grey areas of settled law are interesting - like this one. Can the Southeastern Conference (SEC), a private athletic conference, compel public universities to enforce a policy limiting what fans can transmit from sporting events (i.e. tweets, blog posts, pictures, video, facebook statuses, etc)?

Then there’s the new trends that the law must change to keep up with. With the way that social media continues to grow and adapt, communications and Internet regulation are hot topics.

And don’t forget about the nature of law issues. Does our system of rights, which are primarily negative against the state, still work or are there trends eroding those types of rights and allowing for positive rights to be asserted against fellow citizens or the state?

Is there an issue at your work that is worth exploring further? Or something happening in your neighborhood or homeowners association? Is your family dealing with a legal issue that just doesn’t seem to make sense?

Depending on the nature of your journal and what sort of items they publish, you might have some significant leeway in developing a topic or you might be quite limited in the range of issues or types of questions you can explore. Either way, it helps to brainstorm.

What am I missing? Help your law school brethren out here. What were some helpful approaches you took in developing a topic for your work on a law journal?

Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on August 19, 2009 (boomark / email).