The Marquette Law Review hosted a fantastic symposium on the “ethics of scholarship” back in September and will be publishing an issue dedicated to the topic in the coming months. My short contribution addresses the ethics of a practice that appears to occur at times in law review submissions–namely, the practice of strategically over-claiming the importance of a paper to law review editors in order to improve the prospects of a favorable placement, and then walking back the over-claim prior to releasing the paper to the public. Here’s the abstract:

Sometimes the authors of law review articles engage in a bait-and-switch: they insert exaggerated claims of novelty or significance into their submission to student editors and then, after securing a satisfactory offer of publication, moderate those claims in drafts made available to colleagues and the public. By doing so, the authors manage to improve their chances at a desirable placement and avoid unscholarly claims before peers.

This symposium essay suggests that baiting and switching is unethical, and then discusses potential ways to address it.

With the annual submission season upon us, I hope the essay helps to discourage a problematic practice.