Last Writes? Re-assessing the Law Review in the Age of



Cyberspace

Version 1.2 created March 10, 1997; Version 1.0 created February 5, 1996

Spotlight on...Fred Rodell

Fred Rodell, well-known Realist and the quintessential "bad boy" of American legal academia from the 1930s through the early 1970s, is probably best known for his 1936 Virginia Law Review article entitled "Goodbye to Law Reviews." Written when its author was only 29, the article denounced the existing law review system for its manifold shortcomings and hypocrisies. Although Rodell declared in the piece that he would never write for law reviews again, he eventually penned a number of other law review articles (mostly, as he later described them, "small anniversary or memorial tributes to friends..."). Perhaps in keeping with the spirit of "Goodbye to Law Reviews", his other notable contribution to legal literature was a 1939 tract entitled Woe Unto You, Lawyers in which Rodell exposed the larger foibles of the legal profession.



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