Submission Requirements

Stanford Law Review Online submissions should be original pieces of timely legal scholarship written to be accessible to a wide audience. Our general ethics policy also applies to Stanford Law Review Online submissions.

Currently, we are only accepting pieces for our Special Collection.

Special Collection Requirements

If you are submitting to the V79 special collection on Technology, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Civil Rights, please see our website and submissions call for specific details. Essays of 2,000-5,000 words may be submitted, with selected pieces to be published in Fall 2026.

Submission Length

We have a strong preference for submissions less than 5,000 words (including footnotes). Submissions exceeding 10,000 words will be automatically rejected. Essays longer than 5,000 words are expected to be shortened during the editing process.

Format

Please submit an editable word processing document (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .otf, etc.). PDF submissions will not be accepted.

Style

The submission’s text and citations should conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (22nd ed. 2025), copyrighted by the Columbia Law Review Association, the Harvard Law Review Association, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal.

We encourage concise and targeted footnoting; an essay of 3,000 words typically has about 30 footnotes. Footnotes are required for (1) direct quotations, language, or ideas from sources; (2) references to primary materials, such as cases, statutes, or news articles; and (3) obscure materials that may be difficult for readers to find. An example of the appropriate level of footnoting can be found here.

Anonymized Review

It is our policy to apply the same standards of review to all submissions, and to judge pieces based solely on their content. Our review process is fully anonymized; all voting Online Editors review submissions and select essays without knowledge of the author’s identity, institutional affiliation, or any other biographical information. Only the Online Editor-in-Chief and Online Executive Editor have access to this information.

To preserve the anonymized review process, all submission files must be anonymized. Before submitting, please remove all identifying information, including the author’s name, institution, and any acknowledgements**.

Authors should include their name and identifying information only in the designated fields in the form below and may include them on their cover letter/CV.

Other Issues

Further questions about the submission process should be addressed to Hannah Dahleen, Online Editor-in-Chief for Volume 79, at online@stanfordlawreview.org.