George Mason Civil Rights Law Journal

The George Mason Civil Rights Law Journal (CRLJ) is one of the academic journals run by students at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia. Journal members edit and publish articles written by professors, practitioners, and students that add to the legal scholarship about civil rights. CRLJ published one or two issues each school year from 1990 to 2006-07, and three issues in the '07-'08 school year; the Journal's publisher is William S. Hein & Co., in Buffalo, New York.

GMU Law School Periodicals
*George Mason Law Review
*George Mason Civil Rights Law Journal
*Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy
*Supreme Court Economic Review
*Federal Circuit Bar Journal (through Spring 2008)
*The Green Bag

History
Students concerned about preserving the legal protections for minorities that the American civil rights movement achieved in the '60s and '70s started the Civil Rights Law Journal in 1990. The Journal's first editor-in-chief prefaced the Journal's inaugural volume with the assertion, " Supreme Court will no longer act as a major guardian of minority rights. Because minority groups must now travel the path alone, George Mason University School of Law has created the Civil Rights Law Journal to provide guidance and to serve as a forum for civil rights issues."

Since its founding, CRLJ has fielded an array of articles from variety of points of view. Recent articles have addressed issues on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, free speech, abortion rights, cruel and unusual punishment, search and seizure, voting rights, and rights of the disabled.

The Journal re-designed its cover for beginning with its 10th volume in 1999.

Subscription
A subscription currently costs $40 annually.

Membership Selection
Rising second second-year students ranked in the top 15% of their class are invited to join the Journal. Students with at least a 2.5 GPA may enter a competitive Write-On to join the Journal as well. Second-year evening students also may participate in the Write-On.

The Mason Law Journals usually conduct the Unified Law Journal Write-On over a two-week span after the last first-year final exam. Candidates are required to write a short casenote using only the cases and articles in the packet, which includes various cases, law review articles, and other resources to complete a case note. No other research is necessary to complete the write-on. Candidates are also required to complete a brief spading exercise. The selection process is conducted anonymously.

Candidate Members do not become Full Members until they:

1. Write a casenote or comment of publishable quality;
2. Complete all required footnote editing or other journal related work in a satisfactory manner;
3. Complete the one credit Scholarly Writing class

CRLJ Annual Symposia
Each year, CRLJ holds a symposium on a current civil rights issue. The 2007 symposium was on the Second Amendment, and featured noted scholars who support and oppose widespread gun ownership in America, including Dr. Stephen Halbrook, Dr. Robert J. Cottrol, Dr. Nelson Lund, and Dr. Robert Levy. The '07 Symposium offered CLE credit to attorney attendees. The Journal publishes an issue dedicated to the symposium.

Law Panels
The Journal also hosts occasional panels on a topic in civil rights law. The '08 panel focused on employment law.

Volume 18 Contents
Volume 18 is CRLJ's first three-issue volume.

Issue 18:1
Darrel Menthe, Writing on the Wall: The Impending Demise of Modern Sign Regulation Under the First Amendment and State Constitutions
Adjoa Artis Aiyetoro, Truth Matters: A Call for the American Bar Association to Acknowledge its Past and Make Reparations to African Descendants
Alexis Conway, Leaving Employers in the Dark: What Constitutes a Lawful Appearance Standard After Jespersen v. Harrah's Operating Co.?
Jamie Gregorian, How Primary Election Laws Adversely Affect the Associational Rights of Political Parties in the Commonwealth of Virginia and How to Fix Them

Issue 18:2
Kenneth A. Klukowski, Armed by Right: The Emerging Jurisprudence of the Second Amendment
Richard A. Allen, What Arms? A Textualist's View of the Second Amendment
Dennis A. Henigan, Self-Inflicted Wounds: The D.C. Circuit on the Second Amendment
Nelson Lund, D.C.'s Handgun Ban and the Constitutional Right to Arms: One Hard Question?
William G. Merkel, Parker v. The District of Columbia and the Hollowness of Originalist Claims to Principled Neutrality
James Warner, Disarming the Disabled
John P. Flannery, Students Died at Virginia Tech Because Our Government Failed to Act!
David B. Kopel, Dhimmitude and Disarmament
Brian J. Siebel, The Case Against Guns on Campus
Stephen P. Halbrook, "Only Law Enforcement Will be Allowed to Have Guns": Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans Firearm Confiscations
Derek Bottcher, Bridgers v. Dretke: Not Everything You Say Can and Will be Used Against You
Robert Wilson, Free Speech v. Trial by Jury: The Role of the Jury in the Application of the Pickering Test

Issue 18:3
forthcoming

CRLJ Editorial Board
CURRENT EDITORS

Editor-in-Chief: Matthew Kuskie
Executive Editor: Katherine P. Quinlan
Managing Editor: Philip K. Miles
Senior Articles Editor: Alexis S. Conway*
Articles Editors: Robert Crow, Robert B. Parmiter*, Alexander Zekster*
Articles Selection Editor: Robert O. Wilson*
Senior Notes Editor: Laurie A. Quaife
Notes Editors: Derek M. Bottcher*, Jin Kim
Research Editor: Brigit A. Baron
Symposium Editor: Jamie Gregorian*
Associate Editors: James Anderson, Corey Bean, Eric Davidson, Jesus Hernandez, Kathleen Lagerquist, Eric Lemmer, Kenneth Klukowski, Edward O'Shea, Jeremy Williams
*published in Volume 18
Editors for Volume 19 will be announced at the end of March 2008
Distinguished Alumni
GMU Law's only alumnus to clerk at the Supreme Court was William Consovoy, who was editor-in-chief of CRLJ.

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