Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review

The Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review is a student-run law review published by Harvard Law School. The journal is published two times per year and contains articles, essays, and book reviews concerning civil rights and liberties. In 2009 its online companion Amicus was launched, which features standard length journal articles coupled with online responses.

The journal was established in Spring 1966 in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In their first issue the editors of the new publication wrote that the review "is an emblem and achievement of the collaboration" between the Harvard Civil Liberties Research Service, the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council, and the Harvard Civil Rights Committee, three newly formed organizations that had recently noticed the dearth of legal material on civil rights:

Still, there is today hardly a journal which regularly and completely dedicates its pages to the civil rights revolution and the modern manifestations of the relation between citizen and state. Nor is there any review steadily providing Southern lawyers with library ammunition. Nor does any publication capitalize on the burgeoning interest in rights and liberties among this new generation of law students. Nor does any review endeavor to link together the students and faculties of the various law schools in such a cooperative enterprise.

These are among our aims.

But most important. Ours is to be a review of revolutionary law. Such an ideal is as new as United Nation Declarations on Human Rights and as old as the "Grand Tradition" of Common Law fashioning causes of action to rights and wrongs.

In its 35th anniversary issue, legal academic Morton Horowitz wrote that the journal "seeks to catalyze progressive thought and dialogue through publishing innovative legal scholarship from various perspectives and in diverse fields of study."