Submissions

The City University of New York Law Review (CUNYLR), a publication committed to promoting social justice scholarship, welcomes submissions related to our social justice mission. Our journal is affiliated with the City University of New York School of Law, one of the most diverse law schools in the nation and one of the few entirely dedicated to producing public interest lawyers. In addition to publishing articles by legal scholars, we have a special section in each journal dedicated to public interest articles written by practitioners.

Submission Period

Open call for submissions: annually from March to June 1 for the winter issue, and July to October 1 for the summer issue. 

Please send all submissions to cunylr@mail.law.cuny.edu.

Final decisions on all submissions will be made on a rolling basis. For more information, see our Submissions Requirements and Section Descriptions below.

Submissions Requirements

  • Citations: Citations for all articles and essays should conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (22nd) and appear as footnotes rather than endnotes.
  • Length: Please adhere to the suggested word account for each section, and we encourage brevity. For all sections of the journal, except for the Blog, CUNYLR accepts essay submissions of at least 5,000 words.
  • Format: All submissions must be in Microsoft Word.
  • Abstracts: All abstract submissions must include an expected word count. Authors are encouraged to indicate whether the submission is for Executive Articles, PIPS, or Notes and Comments.
  • Bio or Resume/CV: All submissions must include either a short biography (consisting of a brief list of previously published work) or a resume/CV.
  • Note to Student Authors: We publish analyses of recent court decisions, critiques of legal doctrines, responses to other legal scholarship, and perspective of pressing and emerging social justice legal issues. We highly encourage finalized papers but welcome work in progress that can be finalized by mid-June/mid-October, depending on the issue. 

Section Descriptions and Details

We are currently accepting submissions for all sections of the CUNY Law Review: Executive Articles, Notes and Comments, and the Public Interest Practitioners Section (PIPS).

Executive Articles: The CUNY Law Review Executive Articles section is dedicated to legal scholarship that promotes social justice, informs the legal community of new developments in public interest law, and expands critical legal thought. We welcome submissions from practitioners, legal scholars, judges, and professors across all public-interest and social-justice fields. We work closely with authors throughout the semester to deliver the best possible version of their article for publication. Articles should be 25,000 words or fewer (including footnotes).

Public Interest Practitioner Section (PIPS): The CUNY Law Review Public Interest Practitioner Section (“PIPS”)  welcomes submissions from practitioners who are dedicated to working with and for underrepresented communities. PIPS articles distinguish themselves for their flexibility. Unlike most law review articles, the articles published in PIPS do not require the typical time-consuming tasks such as heavy footnoting or redrafting pieces to meet a considerable length. The purpose of the PIPS section is to provide a space for practitioners to share their thoughts, critiques, proposed solutions, and strategies with other public interest practitioners and the broader legal community. Practitioner articles may range between 5,000 to 20,000 words (including footnotes).

Notes and Comments: The CUNY Law Review Notes and Comments section seeks to uplift student authors and welcomes submissions from all law students for the Notes and Comments section, although preference is given to CUNY Law Students. Student-authored work is published under two umbrellas. First, there are Comments, which analyze a specific court case/decision, piece of legislation, or law and are around 15-30 pages with 100-200 footnotes. Second, there are Notes, which analyze a broader issue of law and are around 25-35 pages, with 100-300 footnotes. The topics of Notes and Comments have varied greatly over the years, with no specific niche or area of the law given priority.