Law Students Call for Changes In Review Selection Process

A group of law students will present a resolution to the Law School faculty Wednesday, urging it to "acknowledge the undesirable nature of the current selection policy at the Harvard Law Review" and to direct the Law Review to investigate alternative methods.

The faculty will also consider two specific proposals that would make minor changes in the procedures but would not de-emphasize first-year grades as the primary criterion for selection to the publication's staff.

Gregory Wilson, a first-year student and spokesman for the Committee of Concerned Students, said the CCS recently obtained the signatures of 648 law students--40 per cent of enrollment--on a petition that called the current Law Review selection policy "anachronistic and counterproductive." A flyer accompanying the petition said that the policy aggravates the problem of competitiveness in the first year.

Wilson said that "It is probably true that at the high end of the scale, grades do indicate the degree of precise analytical ability which is important in a technical journal. But there is still the question of whether or not the Harvard Law Review should continue to emphasize technical writing."

He said that he would like to see the Law Review adopt a "standard of publishability," as does the Yale Law Journal. He said that, personally, he would like to see a general swing toward "more creative legal writing," but that CCS was not ready to endorse full adoption of the Yale system.

The Yale selection process allows for ongoing admission to the Law Journal, but Wilson said it has drawbacks because of a varying flow of manpower.

F.W. Peters, president of the Law Review, called the current policy unfair because the first year class is randomly divided into four sections for grading purposes.

He noted that last year there was wide disparity between the sections in the number of people who were asked to join the Law Review.

Peter will offer a specific proposal to the faculty calling for four or five persons to be taken from the top of the grade list in each section. Then four more, whose grades have placed them among the topranked students but who have been outstripped by members of their own sections, will be invited to join.

The Committee on Legal Education, a subcommittee of the faculty, will propose a strict quota system. They will urge that five or six students be selected from each section, based upon their grade-point averages.

Top 20

Under the current policy, the Law Review receives an alphabetical list of names (without grades) of the top 20 to 40 members of the first-year class based on performance in first-year examinations.

An additional eight to ten students are selected in the fall of the second year.