Back in 1915, people were already grumbling about the proliferation of law journals. But Professor Edwin H. Woodruff, who would soon become Cornell Law School’s fifth dean, stuck to his plan. He was confident the new quarterly would enhance legal scholarship, enrich the intellectual life of the college and improve the law itself – and he was right.

“The Law Review has succeeded spectacularly in each regard,” said Eduardo Peñalver, the Allan R. Tessler Dean and professor of law, celebrating Cornell Law Review’s 100th anniversary April 15. “The Law Review has produced a great deal of groundbreaking legal scholarship, including a number of undisputed classics, and indeed, all of us benefit from the enrichment afforded in these pages.”

Peñalver

For 100 years old, the Law Reviewis looking very, very good. Reviewing this first century, Penãlver named two milestones – “Property and Sovereignty” (1927), written by Morris Cohen, and “Inside the Judicial Mind” (2001), co-authored by Jeffrey Rachlinski, the Henry Allen Mark Professor of Law – that dramatically reshaped legal thinking. Over the years, the Law Review has grown increasingly ambitious, complex and far-reaching.

For its first volume, the staff included only six student editors. For this 100th volume, there are 90 student editors taking full responsibility for six issues each year. The editors receive more than 2,000 submissions from all over the country. This latest issue, with more than 200 pages, addresses the limits of congressional power, the Supreme Court’s much-criticized decision in Lochner v. New York, and the difficulty of regulating banks in this post-Great Recession era.

To Robert Hillman ’72, a student editor on the Law Review and its faculty adviser in the 1980s and ’90s, the challenges remain familiar. “I’m struck by how much the issues the Law Review faces today resemble those of 1970 and even of 1915,” said Hillman, the Edwin H. Woodruff Professor of Law, responding to long-standing criticisms that law reviews are too academic or doctrinal, and that the vast numbers of law reviews dilute their value. “From its beginning, the Law Review has been a leader in publishing work of interest to the entire legal community. … The Law Review continues to be an important training ground for student editors and writers.”

Said incoming editor in chief Mateo J. de la Torre: “Volume 100 and the 99 volumes that came before it have set a tremendously high bar for Volume 101. It’s only with the support of our alumni and Cornell faculty that I can say with absolute confidence that I look forward to this next volume leading us to another successful 100 years.”

Kenneth Berkowitz is a freelance writer for the Law School.