McGill Law Journal
The McGill Law Journal is a scholarly legal publication affiliated with the student body of the McGill University Faculty of Law in Montreal, Quebec, published by a non-profit corporate institution independent of the faculty run exclusively by students.
 | |
| Language | English, French |
|---|---|
| Publication details | |
| History | 1952-present |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| Yes | |
| Standard abbreviations | |
| Bluebook | McGill L.J. |
| ISO 4 | McGill Law J. |
| Indexing | |
| ISSN | 0024-9041 |
| Links | |
It also publishes the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (also known as the McGill Guide), Canada’s legal citation reference work.[1] The Journal was ranked as the best overall student-run law journal in the world outside of the United States in 2010 by the Washington and Lee University School of Law.[2]
Overview
Over the years the McGill Law Journal has garnered significant recognition in Canada and around the world.[3] Since its first citations in the early 1970s, it has been cited more often than any other university-affiliated law journal in the world by the Supreme Court of Canada.[4] Subscribers to the Journal reside in over forty countries across six continents. In addition, the Journal actively contributes to the development of Canadian legal methodology by publishing the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, which has become the standard reference work for almost all Canadian law reviews, Canadian law schools, and courts.[5] The McGill Law Journal's citation style became the official style for Canadian legal citation by the Bluebook, America's equivalent to the McGill Guide, before the first edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation.
Students of the Faculty of Law of McGill University founded the McGill Law Journal in 1952,[6] led by Founding Editor-in-Chief Jacques-Yvan Morin. From that founding, the Journal has promoted the development of legal scholarship by appealing to an audience that includes professors of law, practicing lawyers, and law students. Given that the Province of Quebec is a jurisdiction where the legal traditions of common law and civil law intersect in matters of private law, the first editors of the Journal immediately appreciated its potential as a catalyst for the development of civilian legal scholarship published in English. The Journal is recognized as an important forum[7] for the critical analysis of contemporary legal issues in the realms of public law and private law, as well as international law.
The Journal is a bilingual publication. The editorial team includes both francophone and anglophone students tasked with the selection of articles and their preparation for publication. The Journal publishes a variety of articles pertaining to the civil and common law traditions in both of Canada's official languages. Part of its mandate is to contribute to the development of legal research that is comparative or transsystemic in nature.[8]
Similar to its American counterparts and unlike many of its Canadian competitors, the McGill Law Journal is entirely student-run. In order to ensure the quality of its content, all manuscripts selected for publication are peer reviewed by scholars from Canada and around the world using a double-blind system.
McGill Law Journal's Annual Lecture
Since 2000 (and from 1984–92), the McGill Law Journal has invited an important guest each year to deliver a lecture to the legal community of McGill and Montreal at large. The lecture is published in the McGill Law Journal and is one of the most important events of the year at the Faculty. Before its current incarnation, previous lecturers included Jacques-Yvan Morin (1984) and future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin (1991).
| Year | Speaker | Title | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020
(vol 65) |
James Tully (philosopher) | “Sustainable Democratic Constitutionalism and Climate Change” | Yes |
| 2019
(vol 64) |
Patricia J. Williams, American Legal Scholar | “From Underground Railroad to Overland Migration: When the North Star Can’t Be Found” | No |
| 2018
(vol 63) |
Tim Wu, Professor at Columbia Law | “The Curse of Bigness Revisited - Antitrust in the New Gilded Age” | No |
| 2016 (vol 62) | Mari Matsuda, Lawyer, Activist & Professor | “The Next Dada Utopian Visioning Peace Orchestra: Constitutional Theory and the Aspirational” | Yes |
| 2015 (vol 61) | Suzanne Côté, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada | “The Firsts: Breaking the Glass Ceiling and Provoking Changes” | No |
| 2014
(vol 59) |
Mélanie Joly, Canadian Politician | “Le cadre juridique des villes au Canada” | No |
| 2013
(vol 58) |
Goodwin Liu, Justice of the Supreme Court of California | “Justice and Distribution of Equal Opportunity” | No |
| 2012
(vol 57) |
Sylvain Lussier, Canadian Lawyer | “Equality of all under the law: quand les gouvernements doivent répondre devant les tribunaux” | Yes |
| 2011
(vol 56) |
Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist | Untitled | Yes |
| 2010
(vol 55) |
Rosalie Abella, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada | “International Law and Human Rights: The Power and the Pity” | Yes |
| 2009
(vol 54) |
John Ralston Saul, Canadian philosopher | “The Roots of Canadian Law in Canada” | Yes |
| 2008
(vol 53) |
Patrick Macklem, Canadian Law Professor | “What is International Human Rights Law? Three Applications of a Distributive Account” | Yes |
| 2007
(vol 52) |
Pierre Dalphond, Canadian Senator | “What is the Future of Doctrine in Quebec” | Yes |
| 2006 (vol 51) | John Gomery, Quebec Superior Court Judge | "The Pros and Cons of Commissions of Inquiry" | Yes |
| 2005 (vol 50) | Thomas R. Berger, Supreme Court of British Columbia Judge | "One Man's Justice: My Life in the Courts" | Yes |
| 2004
(vol 49) |
John Fisher, Former Director of Egale Canada | "Outlaws or In-laws?: Successes and Challenges in the Struggle for LGBT Equality" | Yes |
| 2003 (vol 48) | Gérald A. Beaudoin, Canadian Senator | "Le contrôle judiciaire de la constitutionnalité des lois" | Yes |
| 2002
(vol 47) |
Kent Roach, Canadian Law Professor | "Did September 11 Change Everything? Struggling to Preserve Canadian Values in the Face of Terrorism" | Yes |
| 2001
(vol 46) |
Philippe Kirsch, President of the International Criminal Court | "Negotiating an Institution for the Twenty-First Century: Multilateral Diplomacy and the International Criminal Court" | Yes |
| 2000
(vol 45) |
Charles Gonthier, Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada | "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: The Forgotten Leg of the Trilogy, or Fraternity: The Unspoken Third Pillar of Democracy" | Yes |
Books
In 2013 The Journal: 60 years of people, prose, and publication by James Cummins was published by 8th House Publishing in Montreal, detailing the history of the MLJ from volume one through volume fifty-seven upon the sixtieth anniversary of the institution.[9] It was also featured in the book A Noble Roster: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Law at Mcgill by McGill Law alum Ian C. Pilarczyk.[10]
Editors-in-chief
The following list is taken from the mastheads of the McGill Law Journal volumes 1 through 65:
- Vol 1: Jacques-Yvan Morin (issue one), Fred Kaufman (issues two and three), and William H. Reynolds (issue four)
- Vol 2: John E. Lawrence
- Vol 3: Harold W. Ashenmil
- Vol 4: Raymond Barakett
- Vol 5: Henri P. Lafleur
- Vol 6: A. Derek Guthrie
- Vol 7: Norman M. May
- Vol 8: Alan Z. Golden
- Vol 9: Mark M. Rosenstein
- Vol 10: Joseph J. Oliver
- Vol 11: Larry S. Sazant
- Vol 12: Stephen Allan Scott
- Vol 13: Douglas Pascal
- Vol 14: Ronald I. Cohen
- Vol 15: Leonard Serafini
- Vol 16: André T. Mécs
- Vol 17: Joel King
- Vol 18: Michael David Kaylor
- Vol 19: Graham Nevin
- Vol 20: Frank H. Buckley
- Vol 21: Laura Falk Scott
- Vol 22: Louise Pelly
- Vol 23: Cally Jordan
- Vol 24: Neil J. Smitheman
- Vol 25: Mona R. Paul
- Vol 26: Linda R. Ganong (1979–1980) and Patrick Healy (1980–1981)
- Vol 27: F. Jasper Meyers
- Vol 28: Stephen Toope
- Vol 29: Daniel Gogek
- Vol 30: Peter Oliver
- Vol 31: Henry K. Schultz
- Vol 32: Marc Lemieux
- Vol 33: M. Kevin Woodall
- Vol 34: Gary F. Bell
- Vol 35: Daniel Torsher
- Vol 36: Julia E. Hanigsberg
- Vol 37: David A. Chemla
- Vol 38: Mark Phillips
- Vol 39: Erica Stone
- Vol 40: Jodi Lackman
- Vol 41: Mary-Pat Cormier
- Vol 42: Martin J. Valasek
- Vol 43: Sébastien Beaulieu
- Vol 44: Karlo Giannascoli
- Vol 45: Azim Hussain
- Vol 46: Robert Leckey
- Vol 47: Kevin MacLeod
- Vol 48: Carole Chan
- Vol 49: Toby Moneit
- Vol 50: Fabien Fourmanoit
- Vol 51: Kristin Ali
- Vol 52: David Sandomierski
- Vol 53: Benjamin Moss
- Vol 54: Erin Morgan
- Vol 55: Seo Yun Yang
- Vol 56: Sara Ross
- Vol 57: Will Colish
- Vol 58: Marie-Eve Goulet
- Vol 59: Olga Redko
- Vol 60: William Stephenson
- Vol 61: Fraser Harland
- Vol 62: Laura Cárdenas
- Vol 63: Éléna Sophie Drouin
- Vol 64: Joseph Spadafore
- Vol 65: Lauren Weaver
- Vol 66: Nathaniel Reilly
Other alumni
Additional alumni from the Journal include justices Benjamin J. Greenberg, Morris Fish, John Gomery, Jean-Louis Baudouin, Brian Riordan, Allan Lutfy, Suzanne Coupal, Brigitte Gouin, Ronna Brott, Nicholas Kasirer, and Max M. Teitelbaum; politicians including Irwin Cotler and Yoine Goldstein; board chairmen like David P. O'Brien and Bernard Amyot; academic figures like Dick Pound and Bartha Knoppers; and entertainment professionals like Lionel Chetwynd.
References
- "Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 7th Edition HC". Carswell.com. 2010-08-17. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- "Law Journals: Submissions and Ranking". Lawlib.wlu.edu. 2011-08-22. Archived from the original on 2006-03-07. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- "Announcement: McGill Law Journal rated among world's best by Australia". Mcgill.ca. 2009-06-15. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- "The Court » Blog Archive » What Is The Supreme Court Reading?". Thecourt.ca. 2007-03-07. Archived from the original on 2012-02-19. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- "McGill Law Journal". Lawjournal.mcgill.ca. Archived from the original on February 10, 2013. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- "Historical high points". Mcgill.ca. 2007-03-15. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-06. Retrieved 2011-03-11.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- "McGill Law Journal". Lawjournal.mcgill.ca. Archived from the original on 2012-07-22. Retrieved 2012-07-26.
- Bridget Wayland (October 2012). "Soixante ans d'excellence : La Revue de droit de McGill s'éclate!". Focus Online. Retrieved October 23, 2012.
- Ian C. Pilarczyk (1999). A Noble Roster: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Law at Mcgill. McGill University Faculty of Law. pp. 36, 37, 126, 127, 130, 131, and 135–137.
