Abstract
This issue marks the conclusion of the eleventh volume of LCH. Now in general parlance there is nothing particularly noteworthy about an eleventh anniversary. Traditionally the eleventh wedding anniversary was marked by gifts of “steel.” I am happy to accept such gifts on behalf of LCH. But, noting the completion of eleven volumes of this journal seems to me appropriate because I recall vividly the debates about whether ASLCH should launch this journal.
Some quite reasonably worried that our community could not sustain such an enterprise. The landscape of scholarly journals was then, and is now, quite crowded. Then and now journals seemed like risky enterprises. No one would really read scholarly articles, preferring blogs and social media instead. Like small businesses, scholarly journals seemed to come and go with amazing rapidity.
In our field it was not clear who would want to publish in LCH. Senior scholars disdain the rigors of double-blind peer review. American legal academics would not abide a limit of 10,000 words for their scholarship. Younger scholars would not want to take the risk of publishing in a start-up, interdisciplinary journal.
Well, here we are eleven volumes later. The pages of this journal contain, in my view, much remarkable scholarship, from a truly wonderful array of scholars.
Feels to me like an occasion to note and maybe even to celebrate.