Stanford Law Review

Student Submissions: Submit a Note or Comment

We strongly encourage all students interested in making a submission to read the brief Guide to Student Submissions. You must be a Stanford law student or recent graduate in order to submit a Note or Comment.

A Note is a student-authored piece of academic writing which discusses and analyzes an original legal issue or problem in some depth. Beyond this very general description, Notes are quite diverse, both in terms of topic and style. Some are doctrinally focused analyses of particular legal questions. Others present normative arguments on how courts or legislatures should analyze a particular problem that they have not yet addressed adequately. Still others are historical or theoretical. What all good Notes have in common is that they are well-written, interesting, and original treatments of legal problems. Most Notes begin their lives as term papers, either for traditional courses and seminars or for directed research.

A Comment is a student-authored piece of academic writing that is centered around an analysis of a recent case, piece of legislation, law journal article, or law-related book. Comments are significantly shorter than Notes. We encourage any students whose main subject is a critique/analysis of a case, a piece of legislation, a law journal article, or a law-related book to submit their work as Comments, rather than Notes.

The review process for Notes and Comments is blind, and an author’s name is only revealed to the respective committees if the piece is accepted.

Please observe the following guidelines concerning your submission:

Statement of Originality: All Notes & Comments must contain a Statement of Originality (or an Abstract) detailing how the argument being advanced fits into the current literature. It should be clear from this Statement how your argument differs from those of other authors. For Comments, please include a list of other reviews on the case, legislation, article, or book, and address how yours adds to them.
Statement of Resubmission: All resubmitted work must contain a Statement of Resubmission detailing how the paper has been improved since the prior submission. The author should include in this Statement a discussion of how she has taken into consideration any feedback provided by the Notes Committee from the prior submission; if the author felt that the feedback was not valid, she should indicate why.
Word Limit: Notes cannot be longer than 20,000 words; Comments cannot be longer than 7,500 words (except for Comments on books, for which 7,500 words is a suggested limit). These word limits include footnotes (be careful, as the default setting in Microsoft Word does not include footnotes in the word count), but do not include the table of contents, the Statement of Originality, or the Statement of Resubmission. Please note that although the word limit sets the maximum length that will be accepted, many successful submissions are significantly shorter than this limit.
Because the review process is blind, all identifying information, including the author’s name and any acknowledgements, must be removed prior to submission. Further, authors should take care not to discuss their work with any members of the Notes Committee.
During each Note/Comment call, a student may make no more than two total submissions (including both Comments and Notes).
Please specify whether you are submitting your work as a Note or a Comment.

All questions should be addressed to the Notes Committee Ombudsperson at notescommittee[at]stanfordlawreview.org .

Please fill in the form below to submit your Note or Comment.

Confirming your submission After you fill out the form below, hit the "submit" button. You should see a screen with further information, including a submission ID number. Please write this down; without this number we cannot later track your submission. If you want to double-check that your submission has been received, follow the further instructions on that screen. You will also receive e-mail confirmation after the deadline of the Note/Comment call during which we are reviewing your submission. If you do not receive such an e-mail, please contact the Notes Committee Ombudsperson at notescommittee[at]stanfordlawreview.org .