Cornell Law Review

The Cornell Law Review is the flagship legal journal of Cornell Law School. Originally published in 1915 as the Cornell Law Quarterly, the journal features scholarship in all fields of law. Notably, past issues of the Cornell Law Review have included articles by Supreme Court justices Robert H. Jackson, John Marshall Harlan II, William O. Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Cornell Law Review ranks ninth among law journals in impact and influence according to Google Scholar Metrics.

The Cornell Law Review began publication in 1915. Until 1966, the Cornell Law Review published four issues annually and was known as the Cornell Law Quarterly. Six Student Editors were joined by one Faculty Editor, a Business Manager, and an Assistant Business Manager. In the first issue of Cornell Law Quarterly in November 1915, Cornell professor (and soon-to-be dean) Edwin Hamlin Woodruff defended the launch of this new journal from critics who decried the proliferation of legal periodicals at the time (one contemporary critic counted 20 journals total, including non-scholarly periodicals).

Woodruff argued that the Cornell Law Quarterly would "justify its existence if it can reach and be helpful to...lawyers who might otherwise give their attention exclusively to the routine of practice" and noted the "pedagogical value...within the college itself" for the students who worked on the journal. Woodruff wrote that the journal "would not fail of its purpose, if it substantially enhances the spirit of mutual service between the College of Law and Cornell Lawyers; if it aides in some degree to foster any needed reform in the law, or to give help by intelligent discussion and investigation toward the solution of legal problems; and if it satisfies within the college itself among the students and faculty a desire to advance...the cause of legal education in a larger sense."

The first article in the first issue of the Cornell Law Quarterly was authored by Cornell University President Jacob Gould Schurman, who had recently completed his term as Vice-President of the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1915. Schurman, and other authors in that issue and later issues of the Cornell Law Quarterly, chronicled the recent constitutional convention to illuminate the provisions of the state's new Constitution. The journal also realized Woodruff's vision by honing the legal skills of the student editors who served on the journal. One of the first Editors-in-Chief, Elbert Tuttle, later rose to prominence as the Chief Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit during a time when that court was called upon to be the primary enforcer of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in the southern states in that circuit.