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Abstract
This article describes how academic law librarians looking to make a positive impact for racial diversity, equity, and inclusivity could explore ways to support diversification efforts of law reviews and journals. At many law schools, law reviews and journals struggle to be fully inclusive. Lack of diversity on journals contributes to inequity within the legal profession as many of the most prestigious law jobs look for journal participation as a prerequisite. Academic law librarians are well-placed to help journal student-editors implement best practices such as using evidence-based rubrics, undergoing unconscious-bias training, and actively recruiting diverse students.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Judith Lihosit for conceiving of, executing, and hosting the DEI and the Law Librarian Symposium. Thanks also to Kathy Darvil for detailed comments on an early draft and to all the participants of the DEI and the Law Librarian Symposium for their valuable feedback. Special thanks to research assistant par excellence Tiffanie Tagaloa (herself a journal member) who provided invaluable perspective along with excellent research. Many heartfelt thanks to the participants in the DEI and the Law Librarian workshop and symposium, and particularly Julie Krishnaswami, for their empathetic and helpful feedback.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Richard Fausset & Rick Rojas, Autopsy Shows Ahmaud Arbery Was Shot Twice in the Chest, N.Y. Times (May 12, 2020), www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/us/ahmaud-arbery-autopsy.html.
2 Theresa Waldrop, Breonna Taylor Killing: a Timeline of the Police Raid and its Aftermath, CNN, www.cnn.com/2022/02/22/us/no-knock-raid-breonna-taylor-timeline (Mar. 3, 2022, 5:46 PM).
3 Id.
4 George Floyd: What Happened in the Final Moments of His Life, BBC (Jul. 16, 2020), www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726.
5 Rachel Triesman, Darnella Frazier, Teen Who Filmed Floyd’s Murder, Praised for Making Verdict Possible, NPR (Apr. 21, 2021), www.npr.org/sections/trial-over-killing-of-george-floyd/2021/04/21/989480867/darnella-frazier-teen-who-filmed-floyds-murder-praised-for-making-verdict-possib; Valerie Wirtschafter, How George Floyd Changed the Online Conversation around BLM, Brookings Tech Stream (June 17, 2021), www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-george-floyd-changed-the-online-conversation-around-black-lives-matter/.
6 Char Adams, ‘They Almost Got Away with It’: How a Leaked Video Led to Convictions in the Ahmaud Arbery Case, NBC News (Nov. 24, 2021, 05:40 PM), www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/-almost-got-away-leaked-video-led-convictions-ahmaud-arbery-case-rcna6690.
7 Patricia Fernández-Kelly, A Sociological Note on George Floyd’s Death and the Pandemic, Social Sciences Research Council (June 18, 2020), https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/society-after-pandemic/a-sociological-note-on-george-floyds-death-and-the-pandemic/.
8 Dennis Merritt, George Floyd’s Death and COVID-19: Inflection points in the Anthropocene Era? 66 J. Analytical Psychol. 750, 751 (2021).
9 Valerie Wirtschafter, How George Floyd Changed the Online Conversation around BLM, Brookings Tech Stream (June 17, 2021), www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-george-floyd-changed-the-online-conversation-around-black-lives-matter/.
10 Thabi Myeni, Black Lives Matter and the Trap of Performative Activism, Al Jazeera, www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/6/20/black-lives-matter-and-the-trap-of-performative-activism; Yume Murphy, One year after #BlackoutTuesday, What Have Companies Really Done for Racial Justice?, Vox, www.vox.com/the-goods/22463723/blackout-tuesday-blm-sephora-starbucks-nike-glossier.
11 Shaun Harper, Where Is the $200 Billion Companies Promised after George Floyd’s Murder? Forbes (Oct. 17, 2022), www.forbes.com/sites/shaunharper/2022/10/17/where-is-the-200-billion-companies-promised-after-george-floyds-murder/.
12 Resolution Proclaiming that Black Lives Matter, Calling for a Diverse, Equal and Inclusive AALL and Legal Information Profession, AALL (May 2021), www.aallnet.org/about-us/what-we-do/resolutions/resolution-blm-diverse-equal-inclusive-aall/.
13 Michelle Cosby, Follow-Up Statement on Black Lives Matter & Anti-Racism, AALL, www.aallnet.org/ebriefing/aall-ebriefing-follow-up-statement-on-black-lives-matter-anti-racism/ (last visited Dec. 5, 2022).
14 Michelle Cosby, A Message from the AALL President on Black Lives Matter, AALL, www.aallnet.org/ebriefing/aall-ebriefing-a-message-from-the-aall-president-on-black-lives-matter/ (last visited Dec. 5, 2022).
15 AALL, supra note 12.
16 See Shamika Dalton et al., Navigating Law Librarianship While Black: A Week in the Life of a Black Female Law Librarian, 110 Law Libr. J. 429 (2018); See James M. Donovan, Diversity: How Is AALL Doing? 109 Law Libr. J. 7 (2017).
17 This article frequently uses the terms diversity, equity, and inclusion/inclusivity. For purposes of this article, I use diversity when discussing numbers of participants from historically underrepresented populations, equity when discussing achieving representative balance in career positions deemed desirable or prestigious, and inclusion when discussing fostering a shared sense of belonging (as opposed to the feeling of othering inflicted by exclusion).
18 Paul Willison, Rethinking the Writing Competition: Developing Diversity Policies on Law Journals after FASORP I and II, 71 Case W. Res. L. Rev. 351, 373 (2020).
19 Id. at 374.
20 Susan L. Krinsky, The Incoming Class of 2021—The Most Diverse Law School Class in History, LSAC (Dec. 15, 2021), www.lsac.org/blog/incoming-class-2021-most-diverse-law-school-class-history.
21 QuickFacts, United States Census Bureau, www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045222 (last visited Dec. 5, 2022).
22 Willison, supra note 18, at 358–59; SpearIt, Not for Free: Exploring the Collateral Costs of Diversity in Legal Education, 48 U. Pac. L. Rev. 887, 902 (2017).
23 Willison, supra note 18, at 359.
24 Max Accardi et al., Statement, 97 Wash. U. L. Rev. i (2020).
25 The First Black President of the Harvard Law Review, 30 J. Blacks Higher Educ. 22, 23-24 (2000).
26 Adam Chilton et al., Assessing Affirmative Action’s Diversity Rationale, 122 Colum. L. Rev. 331, 333 (2022).
27 Shawntaye Hopkins, UK Rosenberg Law Names 1st Black Editor of Kentucky Law Journal, UKNow (Mar. 9, 2021), https://uknow.uky.edu/campus-news/uk-rosenberg-law-names-first-black-editor-kentucky-law-journal.
28 Chilton et al., supra note 26, at 364.
29 Id.
30 Id.
31 See Susan Sturm & Kinga Makovi, Full Participation in the Yale Law Journal (2014), www.yalelawjournal.org/files/FullParticipationintheYaleLawJournal_otc6qdnr.pdf.
32 Joe Patrice, Yale Law School Grows Increasingly Diverse, Yale Law Journal Takes a Different Path, Above the Law (Jul. 25, 2018), https://abovethelaw.com/2018/07/yale-law-school-grows-increasingly-diverse-yale-law-journal-takes-a-different-path/; Joe Patrice, Yale Law Journal’s Diversity Problem s… Just as Bad as the Last Time We Checked in, Above the Law (Feb. 19, 2021), https://abovethelaw.com/2021/02/yale-law-journals-diversity-problems-just-as-bad-as-the-last-time-we-checked-in/.
33 Chilton et al., supra note 26, at 337.
34 J. Blacks Higher Educ., supra note 25, at 25.
35 Willison, supra note 18, at 352.
36 Andrew J. McClurg, 1L of a Ride: a Well-Traveled Professor’s Roadmap to Success in the First Year of Law School 417 (2d ed. 2013).
37 Id.
38 Nicholas Alexiou, Yes, Law Students, You Should Really Try to Get onto a Journal, Above the Law (May 10, 2018), https://abovethelaw.com/2018/05/yes-law-students-you-should-really-try-to-get-onto-a-journal/.
39 American Bar Association, ABA Profile of the Legal Profession 2022 26.
40 Id.
41 Id.
42 National Association of Law Placement, 2022 NALP Report on Diversity 19.
43 Id. at 20.
44 See American Bar Association, ABA Profile of the Legal Profession 2022 7, 19-20; See Robert Kuehn, Shifting Law School Faculty Demographics, Clinical Legal Education Newsletter, Winter 2021–2022, at 9, 9-10. 
45 McClurg, supra note 36, at 416.
46 See, e.g., Brent E. Newton, Law Review Scholarship in the Eyes of the Twenty-First-Century Supreme Court Justices: an Empirical Analysis, 4 Drexel L. Rev. 399, 409 (2012).
47 Chilton et al., supra note 26, at 385.
48 Id. at 389.
49 See, e.g., McClurg, supra note 36, at 416.
50 See supra notes 22–23 and accompanying text.
51 Willison, supra note 18, at 360 (quoting Rocconi et al., Beyond the Numbers: An Examination of Diverse Interactions in Law School, 12 J. of Diversity in Higher Educ. 27, 29 (2019)).
52 Chilton et al., supra note 26, at 398.
53 See Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023).
54 John Malouf, Bias in Grading, 56 Coll. Teaching 191, 191–192 (2008).
55 Id. at 192.
56 David M. Quinn, How to Reduce Racial Bias in Grading: New Research Supports a Simple, Low-Cost Teaching Tool, 21 Educ. Next 72, 78 (2021).
57 Hamed Taherdoost, What Is the Best Response Scale for Survey and Questionnaire Design; Review of Different Lengths of Rating Scale/Attitude Scale/Likert Scale, 8 J. Acad. Rsch. Mgmt. 1, 7 (2019).
58 Sturm & Makovi, supra note 31, at 79–80.
59 Dionardo Pizana, Exploring Bias, Michigan State University Extension (Jan. 22, 2018), www.canr.msu.edu/news/exploring_bias (quoting the Kirwan Institute, Ohio State University).
60 Artika R. Tyner, Unconscious Bias, Implicit Bias, Microaggressions: What Can We Do about Them? 36 GPSolo 30, 32 (2019); Kathleen Nalty, Strategies for Confronting Unconscious Bias, 45 Colo. Law. 45, 46–47 (2016).
61 Nalty, supra note 60, at 47.
62 Anna Smith Haghighi, What to Know about Microaggressions, Medical News Today (Mar. 10, 2022), www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/microagressions.
63 Id.
64 Tyner, supra note 60, at 33.
65 Tyner, supra note 60, at 32; Nalty, supra note 60, at 47–48.
66 Nalty, supra note 60, at 47.
67 Tyner, supra note 60, at 32; Nalty, supra note 60, at 48–49.
68 University of Kentucky, Faculty Hiring Guidelines, Best Practices and Toolkit 3, https://hr.uky.edu/sites/www.uky.edu.hr/files/employ/images/Faculty%20Hiring%20Guide%20WEB.pdf (last visited Feb. 27, 2023).
69 Tyner, supra note 60, at 33.
70 Id.
71 Sturm & Makovi, supra note 31, at 57–68.
72 Id.
73 Id. at 65.
74 National Pipeline Diversity Initiatives Directory, American Bar Association, www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/diversity_pipeline/projects_initiatives/pipeline_diversity_directory/ (last visited Feb. 28, 2023).
75 AccessLex Institute, Priming the Pump: How Pipeline Programs Seek to Enhance Legal Education Diversity 6 (2018).
76 Sturm & Makovi, supra note 31, at 128.
77 Shannon King Nash & Wayne A. S. Hamilton, Diversity: Attracting & Retaining Tax Professionals, 55 Tax Executive 376, 377 (2003).
78 Id. at 378; Elizabeth J. McInturff and Isabella C. Demougeot, To Increase Diversity, Cultivate Mentorships, 35 Wash. Law. 16, 16–17 (2021).
79 McInturff and Demougeot, supra note 78, at 16.
80 See, e.g., Emily Frigo et al., Grand Valley State University, Library Reports and Communication No. 25, Inclusive Job Descriptions Toolkit 6 (2022) (asserting that “inclusive language is important to reduce possible applicants from self-selecting out.”)
81 Sturm & Makovi, supra note 31, at 130.
82 See 2A Benedict on Admiralty § 7 (2022).
83 Kentucky Law Journal, www.kentuckylawjournal.org/ (last visited March 2, 2023).
84 About, Kentucky Journal of Equine, Agriculture, and Natural Resource Law, www.kjeanrl.com/about (last visited March 2, 2023).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Beau Steenken
Beau Steenken is instructional services librarian and professor of legal research at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. He teaches 1L Legal Research and a variety of upper-level legal-research electives. Along with his colleague Tina M. Brooks, he authors Sources of American Law: An Introduction to Legal Research, an open-access textbook now in its 6th edition.