Language English, French Frequency Quarterly ISSN 0024-9041 | Publication history 1952-present Open access Yes | |
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The McGill Law Journal is a scholarly legal publication affiliated with the student body of the McGill University Faculty of Law in Montreal, Quebec, published by a non-profit corporate institution independent of the faculty run exclusively by students.
Contents
It also publishes the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (also known as the McGill Guide), Canada’s legal citation reference work. The Journal was ranked as the best overall student-run law journal in the world outside of the United States in 2010 by the Washington and Lee University School of Law.
Overview
Over the years the McGill Law Journal has garnered significant recognition in Canada and around the world. Since its first citations in the early 1970s, it has been cited more often than any other university-affiliated law journal in the world by the Supreme Court of Canada. Subscribers to the Journal reside in over forty countries across six continents. In addition, the Journal actively contributes to the development of Canadian legal methodology by publishing the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, which has become the standard reference work for almost all Canadian law reviews, Canadian law schools, and courts. The McGill Law Journal's citation style became the official style for Canadian legal citation by the Bluebook, America's equivalent to the McGill Guide, before the first edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation.
Students of the Faculty of Law of McGill University founded the McGill Law Journal in 1952, led by Founding Editor-in-Chief Jacques-Yvan Morin. From that founding, the Journal has promoted the development of legal scholarship by appealing to an audience that includes professors of law, practicing lawyers, and law students. Given that the Province of Quebec is a jurisdiction where the legal traditions of common law and civil law intersect in matters of private law, the first editors of the Journal immediately appreciated its potential as a catalyst for the development of civilian legal scholarship published in English. The Journal is recognized as an important forum for the critical analysis of contemporary legal issues in the realms of public law and private law, as well as international law.
The Journal is a bilingual publication. The editorial team includes both francophone and anglophone students tasked with the selection of articles and their preparation for publication. The Journal publishes a variety of articles pertaining to the civil and common law traditions in both of Canada's official languages. Part of its mandate is to contribute to the development of legal research that is comparative or transsystemic in nature.
Similar to its American counterparts and unlike many of its Canadian competitors, the McGill Law Journal is entirely student-run. In order to ensure the quality of its content, all manuscripts selected for publication are peer reviewed by scholars from Canada and around the world using a double-blind system.
McGill Law Journal's Annual Lecture
Since 2000 (and from 1984-92), the McGill Law Journal has invited an important guest each year to provide a lecture to the legal community of McGill and Montreal at large. The lecture is published in the McGill Law Journal and is one of the most important events of the year at the Faculty. Previous lecturers have included Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Charles Gonthier (2000), Philippe Kirsch, President of the International Criminal Court (2001), Canadian Senator Gérald A. Beaudoin (2003), Justice John Gomery (2006), Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul (2009), Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Rosalie Abella (2010), and iconic Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes (2011). Before its current incarnation, previous lecturers included Jacques-Yvan Morin (1984) and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin (1991).
Books
In 2013 The Journal: 60 years of people, prose, and publication by James Cummins was published by 8th House Publishing in Montreal, detailing the history of the MLJ from volume one through volume fifty-seven upon the sixtieth anniversary of the institution. It was also featured in the book A Noble Roster: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Law at Mcgill by McGill Law alum Ian C. Pilarczyk.
Editors-in-chief
The following list is taken from the mastheads of the McGill Law Journal volumes 1 through 59:
Other alumni
Additional alumni from the Journal include justices [[Benjamin J. Greenb erg]], Morris Fish, John Gomery, Jean-Louis Baudouin, Brian Riordan, Allan Lutfy, Suzanne Coupal, Brigitte Gouin, Ronna Brott, Nicholas Kasirer, and Max M. Teitelbaum; politicians including Irwin Cotler and Yoine Goldstein; board chairmen like David P. O'Brien and Bernard Amyot; academic figures like Dick Pound and Bartha Knoppers; and entertainment professionals like Lionel Chetwynd.