Submissions

The Submissions Process

Submissions for the Spring 2024 are now closed and are under consideration. We will open for submissions for Fall 2024 over the summer.

To submit your work, please submit a PDF file of your article via Scholastica. There is no need to email submissions.

Submissions should have a clear connection to both law and the humanities, broadly defined. We have previously published scholarship in areas including law and literature, law and religion, legal history, and legal theory. We encourage authors to consult recent issues to get a sense of the breadth of scholarship welcomed by the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities. In order to ensure that publication opportunities are accessible to scholars whether their background is rooted in law or in the humanities, either Bluebook OR Chicago Style citations are permissible.

The Journal values blind review—each piece will be anonymized and considered without regard to academic position or institutional affiliation. Every submission is read by an Editor-in-Chief and a team of editors. The Journal does have a policy of issuing desk rejections with the approval of two readers. Due to the volume of submissions we receive, we cannot individually respond to authors whose pieces are not accepted.

Please send any submissions questions to: yjlh@yale.edu.

A Note on Submission Length

In addition to reading the guidelines above, please take a moment to review our position on submission length before sending us your work.

YJLH cares more about the quality of submissions than their length, and the Journal recognizes that the appropriate length for a submission will vary depending on the submission's topic and the complexity of its argument. Therefore, we do not have any rigid word count cutoffs. However, we strongly encourage authors to convey their arguments as concisely as possible, since law review submissions are often excessively long.

As such, all other things being equal, the Journal would prefer submissions roughly in the 12,000 to 15,000 word range, including footnotes. This length range represents scholarship that would likely be substantial enough to be considered an Article while still short enough to be digestible. However, this range is merely a guideline. If an author can make a compelling, interesting, and substantial argument in even fewer words, we would view that concision as a positive.

Of course, submissions may need to be longer than this range to effectively convey their arguments. If a submission does need to be longer, we believe most authors can convey their arguments effectively in 25,000 words or fewer, again including footnotes. While straying over this 25,000-word mark would not automatically disqualify a submission, we would view a length above 25,000 words as a negative unless we could clearly see why the submission needs to be so long.

A Note on Student Submissions

The Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities welcomes student scholarship. The Journal does not currently publish law student Notes on a separate track from Articles. However, students from any law school may submit their work for potential publication as standard Articles. Student work will be reviewed alongside all other submissions and with the same procedures, including rolling submissions and blind evaluations.

A Note on Submissions from Non-Legal Academics

The Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities welcomes submissions from scholars who are not legal professionals, academics, or students. Students and faculty in other disciplines are encouraged to submit work relating to law and the humanities.

Subscriptions

The Yale Journal of Law & Humanities is currently not accepting subscribers. All of our issues will be published on our digital commons portal with open access. To view our current and previous issues, please click here.