Legal Commentary

I was extremely pleased to see that the great new paper by Sonja Starr that I blogged about earlier this month appears to have had an impact in a recent case out of the Northern District of Illinois.  Professor Starr?s thoughtful paper advocates sentencing reductions as a remedy for prosecutorial misconduct.  The sentencing judge in United States v. Dicus not only reduced the defendant?s sentence based on the prosecutor?s misconduct in the case, but he also explicitly references Starr?s paper (which is available on SSRN).  (Hat tip:  Doug Berman)

This case has me thinking about how we could better disseminate our scholarship.  You may remember the widespread attention last year when the NY Times reported that many judges on the Second Circuit expressed the view that legal ?scholarship no longer had any impact on the courts.?  There is empirical evidence that judicial opinions cite law review articles less often now than in earlier decades. Undoubtedly, not all legal scholarship will be of equal interest to judges, but there are some articles that very well may be.  Sometimes, in the course of my more theoretical research, we may come across a discrete doctrinal issue and consider writing on that topic.  What should those of us who are writing such scholarship do in order to ensure that the lawyers and judges who are dealing with these issues are aware of the articles (or books, etc) on the issue?

For example, I recently co-authored an article on standards of appellate review for federal sentencing decisions.  I think that the article could provide much-needed guidance to the courts of appeals, which are deciding dozens of these cases every month.  Would it make sense to send a reprint to chambers?  What are the chances that a judge would read an unsolicited 50 page article?  How could I publicize the article to attorneys who are litigating these cases (besides guest blogging here on Prawfs, of course)?  How can we help to ensure that our scholarship does, in fact, have an impact on the courts?