According to the Journal Citation Reports, the Harvard Law Review's 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of 143 journals in the category "Law". It is published monthly from November through June, with the November issue dedicated to covering the previous year's term of the Supreme Court of the United States. The journal also publishes the online-only Harvard Law Review Forum, a rolling journal of scholarly responses to the main journal's content.
The Harvard Law Review Association, in conjunction with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal, publishes the Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, a widely followed authority for legal citation formats in the United States.
The Harvard Law Review published its first issue on April 15, 1887, making it one of the oldest operating student-edited law reviews in the United States. The establishment of the journal was largely due to the support of Louis Brandeis, then a recent Harvard Law School alumnus and Boston attorney who would later go on to become a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
From the 1880s to the 1970s, editors were selected on the basis of their grades; the president of the Review was the student with the highest academic rank. The first female editor of the journal was Priscilla Holmes (1953-1955, Volumes 67-68); the first woman to serve as the journal's president was Susan Estrich (1977), who later was active in Democratic Party politics and became the youngest woman to receive tenure at Harvard Law School; its first non-white ethnic minority president was Raj Marphatia (1988, Volume 101), who is now a partner at the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray; its first African-American president was the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama (1991); its first openly gay president was Mitchell Reich (2011); its first Latino president was Andrew M. Crespo. The first female African-American president, ImeIme Umana, was elected in 2017.
Gannett House, a white building constructed in the Greek Revival style that was popular in New England during the mid-to-late 19th century, has been home to the Harvard Law Review since the 1920s. Before moving into Gannett House, the journal resided in the Law School's Austin Hall.
Since the change of criteria in the 1970s, grades are no longer the primary basis of selection for editors. Membership in the Harvard Law Review is offered to select Harvard law students based on first-year grades and performance in a writing competition held at the end of the first year except for twelve slots that are offered on a discretionary basis. The writing competition includes two components: an edit of an unpublished article and an analysis of a recent United States Supreme Court or Court of Appeals case. The writing competition submissions are graded blindly to assure anonymity. Fourteen editors (two from each 1L section) are selected based on a combination of their first-year grades and their competition scores. Twenty editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. The remaining twelve editors are selected on a discretionary basis. According to the law review's webpage, "Some of these discretionary slots may be used to implement the Review's affirmative action policy." The president of the Harvard Law Review is elected by the other editors.
Prominent alumni of the Harvard Law Review include:
Barack Obama, served as president of volume 104
Stephen Breyer, served as articles editor of volume 77
Felix Frankfurter
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, served as editor for one year before transferring to Columbia Law School
Elena Kagan, served as supervising editor of volume 99
John G. Roberts, Jr., served as managing editor for volume 92
Antonin Scalia, served as notes editor for volume 73
Edward Sanford
David J. Barron, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, served as articles editor
Michael Boudin, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, served as president of volume 77
Henry Friendly, late judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, served as president
Merrick Garland, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, served as articles editor
Harris Hartz, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, served as case and developments editor
Ketanji Brown Jackson, judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, supervising editor of volume 109.
William Kayatta, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Pierre Leval, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, served as notes editor
Debra Ann Livingston, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
James Kenneth Logan, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
Nina Pillard, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
James L. Oakes, late judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Learned Hand, late judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, served as an editor but later resigned.
Richard Posner, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, served as president of volume 75
Dean Acheson, Secretary of State
Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security and former judge on United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
William Coleman, Jr., Secretary of Transportation, Brown v. Board of Education attorney, and first African-American Supreme Court clerk
Elliot Richardson, Attorney General, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Commerce, served as president (1947)
Paul Clement, former U.S. Solicitor General, served as Supreme Court editor
Archibald Cox, late U.S. Solicitor General
Christopher Cox, former chairman of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas
Viet Dinh, former Assistant Attorney General, served as Bluebook editor
Charles Evans Hughes Jr., former U.S. Solicitor General
Michael Froman, U.S. Trade Representative
Julius Genachowski, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
Ian Gershengorn, former acting U.S. Solicitor General
Danielle Gray, former Cabinet Secretary
Erwin N. Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon
Alger Hiss, former U.S. State Department Official and alleged spy
Ron Klain, former chief of staff to vice presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden
Michael Leiter, former Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, president of volume 113
Mark S. Martins, Brigadier General in the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, Chief Prosecutor of Military Commissions
Bernard Nussbaum, former White House Counsel, served as notes editor
F. Whitten Peters, former Secretary of the Air Force, served as president
Mike Pompeo, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Edith Ramirez, chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission
Rod Rosenstein, nominee for U.S. Deputy Attorney General
Jamie Raskin, U.S. Representative from Maryland
Robert A. Taft, U.S. Senator from Ohio
Barry B. White, former United States Ambassador to Norway
Preeta D. Bansal, former New York State Solicitor General, served as supervising editor
Allan Gotlieb, former Canadian Ambassador to the United States
Eliot Spitzer, former Governor of New York
Robert Stanfield, former Premier of the Province of Nova Scotia, and former leader of Canada's Official Opposition. He was the Review's first Canadian editor in the late 1930s.
Stephen Barnett, legal scholar at University of California, Berkeley School of Law who opposed the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970
Alexander Bickel, late professor at Yale Law School
Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University
Kingman Brewster, former president of Yale University, served as treasurer
Amy Chua, professor at Yale Law School, served as executive editor
Stephen J. Friedman, president of Pace University
John H. Garvey, president of The Catholic University of America
Annette Gordon-Reed, professor at Harvard Law School and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History
Charles Hamilton Houston, former Dean of Howard University Law School and NAACP Litigation Director
Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, professor at Yale Law School
Harold Koh, former Dean of Yale Law School
David Leebron, president of Rice University, served as president
Lance Liebman, former Dean of Columbia Law School, served as president
William C. Powers, former president of University of Texas, served as managing editor
John Sexton, former president of New York University
James Vorenberg, former Dean of Harvard Law School, served as president
Michael K. Young, president of Texas A&M University
Bennett Boskey, law clerk to Judge Learned Hand and two U.S. Supreme Court justices
Joe Flom, noted M&A attorney and name partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
John B. Quinn, founder and name partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan
Writers and journalists
Phil Graham, former publisher of The Washington Post
Archibald MacLeish, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
Cliff Sloan, former publisher of Slate
Jeffrey Toobin, print and broadcast journalist
David Bonderman, co-founder of private equity firm TPG Capital
Norman Dorsen, former American Civil Liberties Union president
Jeff Kindler, former CEO of Pfizer
Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major League Baseball, served as articles editor
Adebayo Ogunlesi, chairman and managing partner of Global Infrastructure Partners
Nadine Strossen, former American Civil Liberties Union president
