Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences v. Harvard Law Review et al

Filing 1

COMPLAINT against All Defendants Filing fee: $ 400, receipt number 0101-7354972 (Fee Status: Filing Fee paid), filed by Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences. (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit 1, # 2 Exhibit 2, # 3 Exhibit 3, # 4 Exhibit 4, # 5 Exhibit 5, # 6 Exhibit 6, # 7 Civil Cover Sheet, # 8 Category Form )(Vien, George) Modified on 10/10/2018 (Montes, Mariliz).

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T

he Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship. The Review comes out

monthly from November through June and has roughly 2,500 pages per volume.
The organization is formally independent of the Harvard Law School. Student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions and, together with a professional business staff of three, carry out day-to-day operations.
Aside from serving as an important academic forum for legal scholarship, the Review has two other goals. First, the journal is designed to be an effective research
tool for practicing lawyers and students of the law. Second, it provides opportuni-

ties for Review members to develop their own editing and writing skills. Accordingly, each issue contains pieces by student editors as well as outside authors.
The Review publishes articles by professors, judges, and practitioners and solicits
reviews of important recent books from recognized experts. All articles — even
those by the most respected authorities — are subjected to a rigorous editorial
process designed to sharpen and strengthen substance and tone.
Most student writing takes the form of Notes, Recent Cases, and Recent Legislation. Notes are approximately 22 pages and are usually written by third-year students. Recent Cases and Recent Legislation are normally 8 pages and are written
mainly by second-year students. Recent Cases are comments on recent decisions
by courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court, such as state supreme courts, federal
circuit courts, federal district courts, and foreign courts. Recent Legislation look at
new statutes at either the state or federal level.
Student-written pieces also appear in the special November and April issues. In addition to the Supreme Court Foreword (usually by a prominent constitutional law
scholar), faculty Case Comments, and a compilation of statistics about the Court’s
previous Term, the November issue includes about 20 Leading Cases, which are
analyses by third-year students of the most important decisions of the previous
Supreme Court Term. The April issue features the annual Developments in the
Law, an in-depth treatment of an important area of the law prepared by third-year
editors of the Review.
All student writing is unsigned. This policy reflects the fact that many members of
the Review besides the author make a contribution to each published piece.
For more information about the Harvard Law Review, see Erwin Griswold’s
Glimpses of Its History (/1987/01/glimpses-of-its-history-as-seen-by-an-aficionado/) (published in the 1987 Centennial Album of the Review).

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board of editors
vol. 131 2017-18
Yasmina Abdel-Malek
Audrey L. Adu-Appiah
Paulina D. Arnold
Segun I. Babatunde II
Laura B. Bakst
Simon J. Barnicle
Robert A. Batista
Seth Robert Berliner
David C. Beylik
Leila Bijan
Katrina M. Braun
Molly Brown
Jeff Campbell
Sarah L. Catalano
Grayson E. Clary
Zachary Copeland
Catherine M. Coquillette
Caroline Cox
Kevin P. Crenny
Christian S. Daniel
Taylor R. Davis
Yoseph Desta
Frederick J. Ding
anneke dunbar-gronke
Clare J. Duncan
Adabelle U. Ekechukwu
Blake J. Ellison
Daniel E. Farewell
Imani Renee Franklin
Harleen K. Gambhir
Cary A. Glynn
Jenya Godina
Mary E. Goetz
Sandra I. González Sánchez
Chloe K. Goodwin
Emerson Gordon-Marvin
Max Gottschall

Harry S. Graver
Matthew P. Griechen
Victoria Hall-Palerm
Andrew Leon Hanna
Noah Heinz
Andrew R. Hellman
Colin M. Herd
Tre A. Holloway
Dennis D. Howe
Chandler S. Howell
Ellora Thadaney Israni
Ginger Jackson-Gleich
Jyoti Jasrasaria
Madeline B. Jenks
Ben Jernigan
Madeleine Joseph
Alexandra C. Jumper
Sarah Kahwash
Caitlin Kearney
Kevin Keller
Alex King
Alexa Kissinger
Cason Kynes
Harry Perlmuth Larson
Jesse Lempel
David W. Li
Molly Ma
Sarah Loucks
Paul Maneri
Marissa L. Marandola
Rebecca D. Martin
Hannah Mullen
Raeesa Imraan Munshi
Alisan L. Oliver-Li
Daniel L. Ottaunick
Catherine Padhi
Isaac Park
David A. Phillips
Bradley Pough
Vinitra Rangan
Alexandra Remick
Dawson K. Robinson
Steven Schaus

Peter L. Schmidt
Kathleen Smith Shelton
Spencer D. Smith
Zach ZhenHe Tan
Ariel T. Teshuva
Robin Tholin
Michael L. Thomas, Jr.
Daniel P. Tingley
ImeIme Umana
Nicholas A. Varone
Alice X. Wang
Jessica Y. Zhang

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PA S T B O A R D S

membership
Membership in the Harvard Law Review is limited to second- and
third-year law students who are selected after an annual writing
competition. The Review strongly encourages all students to participate in the writing competition. Harvard Law School students who
are interested in joining the Review must write the competition at
the end of their 1L year, even if they plan to take time off during law
school or are pursuing a joint degree and plan to spend time at an-

other Harvard graduate school. Students who spent their 1L year at
other law schools and are applying to transfer to Harvard Law School
must write a competition in the spring of their 1L year and must be
admitted to Harvard Law School to become a member of the Review.
Forty-eight editors are invited to join the Review each year. Twenty
editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. Seven
editors, one from each 1L section, shall be selected based on an
equally weighted combination of competition scores and 1L grades.
Three editors shall be selected based on an equally weighted combination of competition scores and 1L grades, without regard to section. Eighteen editors shall be selected through a holistic but anonymous review that takes into account all available information. The
Review remains strongly committed to a diverse and inclusive
membership.
Applicants who wish to make aspects of their identity available
through the Law Review's holistic consideration process will have
the opportunity to indicate their racial or ethnic identity, physical
disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. Applicants also have the option of submitting an expository statement of no more than 150 words that identifies and describes aspects of their background not fully captured by the categories provided on the form. Statements will be considered by the
Selection Committee only after grading of the Subcite and Case Comment sections of the competition has been completed. Statements
will remain anonymous and will not be evaluated for quality of writing or editing, nor will they be assigned a numerical score. Applicants
are welcome to draft their expository statements before the competi-

tion week begins, and the prompt for the 150 word statement is as
follows: "You may use the space below to submit a typed expository
statement of no more than 150 words that identifies and describes
aspects of your identity not fully captured by the categories on the
previous page, including but not limited to racial or ethnic identity,
socioeconomic background, disability, gender identity, and/or sexual
orientation."
The Law Review expects to invite editors to join Volume 133 over the
course of several days during the second half of July. This timeline is
subject to change and any updates will be posted to this website
when available. Orientation for new editors will begin on Wednesday, August 1.

writing competition
The writing competition for the Class of 2020 will begin on Saturday,
May 12, after the completion of 1L final exams, and end on Saturday,
May 19.
The competition consists of two parts. The subcite portion of the
competition, worth 40% of the competition score, requires students
to perform a technical and substantive edit of an excerpt from an unpublished article. The case comment portion of the competition,

worth 60% of the competition score, requires students to describe
and analyze a recent Court of Appeals or State Supreme Court
decision.
***
Competition Tips Session and Subcite Training Session
The General Tips Session was held on Tuesday, April 10 from 4:45
pm - 6:15 pm in Langdell Hall 272. Click here to access the video
recording of the Tips Session. Click here to access an information
packet and practice Subcite.
The Subcite Training Session was held on Thursday, April 19th from
4:45 pm - 6:15 pm in Langdell Hall 272. A video recording of the
Subcite Training Session is available here.
***
Receiving the Harvard Law Review competition materials
off campus
If you would like to take the competition, but will not be on campus
when the competition is distributed on Saturday, May 12, you may
request that the competition materials be shipped to you via Federal
Express. The cost for the mailing is $45.
In order to have the competition mailed to you, you must complete
the FedEx shipping form. The deadline to submit the form is Friday, May 4.
***

Information for Prospective Transfer Students
Prospective transfer students have the option of taking the competition at the same time as Harvard Law School 1Ls, or taking a separate transfer competition running from May 19-26. Like the regular
competition, the transfer competition has a case comment and subcite portion. There is no advantage to taking either competition, and
transfer students should take whichever competition is most convenient with their schedule. Transfer students are selected on the same
blind grading basis as Harvard 1Ls and are eligible for 38 of the spots
on the Review (in other words, all spots besides the 10 allotted to
Harvard 1Ls for whom first-year grades play a role). Transfer students may submit an anonymized, unofficial transcript when their 1L
grades are released if they would like their grades to be considered in
the Law Review’s holistic review process.
As noted on the Harvard Law School website, the deadline for completing a transfer application is June 15, so many prospective transfer students will not have been accepted to Harvard Law School at
the time of the competitions in May. Many prospective applicants
may not even have decided whether to apply to transfer, in part because they may not yet know their spring semester grades. Notwithstanding these uncertainties, the Review strongly encourages
prospective transfer applicants to write a competition. While being
selected to join the Review in no way guarantees a transfer applicant
admission to Harvard Law School, it is the policy of the Review to
inform the admissions office whenever a transfer student successfully gains membership on the Review.

Prospective transfer students who would like to take the competition
from Saturday, May 19 to Saturday, May 26 may register by completing the transfer applicant FedEx shipping form. The cost for
the mailing is $45. The deadline to submit the form is Friday, May 11.
Information for SJD Students
SJD students at Harvard Law may serve as editors of the Law Review. To join, SJDs take the same writing competition as JD students
and are eligible for 38 of the editorial positions (all spots besides
those allotted to JD 1Ls for whom first-year grades play a role). Serving as an editor of the Law Review is a two-year commitment so
SJDs should take the competition only if they are certain they have at
least two years remaining in their program of study. Additionally, as
with all candidates, SJDs are permitted to participate in the writing
competition only once.
Information for Students with Disabilities
The Harvard Law Review provides accommodations on the writing
competition to students with documented disabilities on an individual, case-by-case basis. To request an accommodation, please email a
completed registration form to Lakshmi Clark-McClendon, Director
of Student Affairs in the Dean of Students Office, at [e-mail]. In order to allow sufficient time to review documentation,
students must submit their requests no later than April 13, and are
encouraged to submit documentation as soon as possible. Please
note that although accommodations decisions are ultimately made
by the Review, no student will receive personal identifying information about any student requesting accommodation.

Religious Accommodations
Students with unavoidable religious conflicts during the competition,
including those fasting for Ramadan, should email [e-mail] to request an accommodation.

t h e b lu e b o o k
The Bluebook is the definitive style guide for legal citation in the
United States, compiled by the editors of the Harvard Law Review,
the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. The Bluebook is available for purchase in hard copy, or online (including a mobile version for the
iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch) at www.legalbluebook.com.

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