Scholarly Legal Monographs: Advantages of the Road Less Taken

Although many of Professor Bernard J. Hibbitts\u27s criticisms of law reviews in the accompanying article may be excessive, Hibbitts\u27s arguments for the advantages of self publication on the Web are provocative. Although I do not believe that self publication is likely to replace law reviews during the foreseeable future, Hibbitts almost surely is correct in predicting that increasing numbers of law professors will use the Web as an alternative to traditional modes of publication. Hibbitts, however, has overlooked another alternative to the traditional law review books. This is not surprising, since legal academics traditionally have disseminated their scholarship through law reviews rather than university presses or other publishers of scholarly books. At least until recently, scholarly monographs among law professors have been rare. Since I have published three scholarly books, in addition to various law review articles, the editors of the Akron Law Review have asked me to prepare a brief essay on the relative advantages and disadvantages of publishing books as opposed to law review articles