Jacob Smith ‘23
Professor Liaison Editor
Long-time reader of the Law Weekly? New to North Grounds and joining us for the first time? Either way, thank you for reading us! I want to remind you that the Law Weekly staff is always very glad to receive letters to the editor. Letters need not be in response to one of our articles.[1] Rather, letters on any topic of interest to the Law School community may be sent to editor@lawweekly.org.
This invitation goes out to all members of our readership, even brand-new 1Ls embarking on their legal careers. As we wrote in our inaugural 1948 issue, “This school is here primarily to encourage the development and dissemination of ideas. Let not one of our readers ever discard the notion to publicize [their] thoughts with the alibi that no one would be interested in receiving them!” We really do want to hear from you.
But the main reason I am writing today is to assure our legal professional readers, and especially our amazing Law School professors, that we are especially eager to hear from them. Professors can and do write letters to the editor, but we also have a space specifically set aside for their learned insights—our Dicta column.
Dicta began in our inaugural 1948 issue with the ambitious goal of considering “basic aims of the law and [the] role of [law] schools.” Dean F.D.G. Ribble wrote about the role of the law school in the first Dicta column. The rest of that year’s column focused on criminal justice. Dicta ran on the front page every single week that year, featuring the opinions of judges, attorneys, professors from multiple law schools, and at one point even the Head of Scotland Yard. Where necessary, the Law Weekly published distillations of pertinent law review articles. The final column of that year was written by (or taken from a writing by) Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Since then, Dicta has had its ups and downs. The column probably reached its peak when it was cited by the Supreme Court in 1977. However, as the Law Weekly gradually became less stuffy and more entertaining, Dicta became less of a focus. At some point Dicta stopped (for the most part) covering one topic at a time and turned into a general forum for thoughts on any legal topic. In 1987 and 1988 the since-discontinued Vanguard column took shots at its popularity, claiming that “Dicta is read about as often as the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.” The 1990s saw efforts to “revive” Dicta. The Law Weekly even tried to get students involved, hosting a student essay competition in 1995 and urging 3Ls to submit excerpts from unpublished journal articles in 1996. But Dicta finally reached its nadir in the 2005-2006 academic year when Volume 58 of the Law Weekly failed to publish any Dicta at all. Dicta was resurrected in 2008, flickered out again from 2011 to 2014, was briefly restored in the 2015-2016 academic year, dropped out again in 2016-2017, featured one column in 2017-2018, and then was silent until last year, when Leah Deskins ’21 managed to get two columns published.
Now, today, as the editor who has received the Dicta mantle, I am determined to prevent this from becoming another Dicta-less year. Professors and alumni, I want to hear from you! At this point, Dicta has evolved to more generally feature recent developments in your scholarship, as well as your views about current events in the law. It's basically an outlet to share your research or thoughts with the legal community. Writing a Dicta column is a great way to explore a new idea in a less formal medium, get the word out about recent scholarship, or just communicate something that's on your mind.
Writing a column is ridiculously easy, too: we publish online and in print every week during the semester, ending a few weeks before finals. No need to get pencilled in for a particular week, just send us 800 words whenever you are ready and we will fit it in. You don’t even have to cite your sources. Past Dicta columns have discussed a wide variety of topics: lessons from the life of the late legal philosopher John Garnder, the Takings clause, Obergefell v. Hodge, and D.C. voting rights. UVA professors—I WILL read your law review articles and hunt you down if I have to, but please do give it a shot this year. And non-UVA lawyers, professors, judges, justices, and Heads of Scotland Yard—this invitation is for you too! Regardless of your affiliation, we thank you for your readership and would love to hear your insights.
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js3hp@virginia.edu
[1] Such letters are certainly welcome (we like knowing people actually read what we publish).