Duke Law Journal

Submission Information

The Duke Law Journal publishes eight issues per year. Seven of the issues feature scholarship on a wide range of topics written by scholars, attorneys, other professionals, and Duke Law students. The eighth issue is devoted to the Administrative Law Symposium.

Please see additional details regarding the current submission period below. We review every submission we receive.

Submission Instructions:

• Articles may only be submitted electronically via Scholastica.
• Please provide a cover letter including your name, school or affiliation, title of your manuscript, address, telephone number, and email address.
  • DLJ will also consider entries for DLJ Online. Please indicate in your cover letter if you would like your piece to be considered for DLJ Online. Please find additional guidelines below.
• We do not accept comments.
• We do not accept book reviews or manuscripts from student authors.

Article/Essay Guidelines:

• We will not publish articles that exceed 35,000 words except in extraordinary circumstances. We prefer articles above 10,000 words.
  • Authors with shorter pieces (with a strong preference for those under 7,500 words) may consider submission to Duke Law Journal Online. DLJ Online especially seeks pieces that address timely legal topics and/or are intended for a broader, non-academic audience. Pieces should contain properly Bluebooked citations, but may include multimedia or other nontraditional components.
• Please conform text and citations to the 22nd edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. We will not accept submissions that substantially deviate from Bluebook form.
• We encourage but do not require the provision of an abstract and conformity with the 18th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.
• Please review our article length, editing, and Open Access policies before submitting articles to the Journal.

Review Process:

• Every Duke Law Journal editor participates in the selection of articles. We will review your submission within five weeks of submission.
• If you receive an offer from another journal and wish to request expedited review, please use Scholastica’s expedite feature. We will do our best to meet your request and communicate with you.
• If the Article Selection Committee votes to extend an offer of publication, we will contact you by phone and email. We expect that you withdraw all other submissions if you accept our offer of publication.

Updates for Volume 76:

• DLJ has a double-blind peer review system, which may affect some requests for expedited review.
• Authors selected for publication will be asked to share all on file sources. If you have confidential sources, we will work to find a way to substantiate your piece while maintaining the confidentiality of your sources.
• We are also building our empirical research assessment capacity and are excited to review pieces involving a variety of methodological approaches.
  • Please ensure that empirical articles clearly explain the relationship between your institutional background, the theory you are proposing, your hypotheses, and the reasoning behind your methodological approach. Additionally, explain your data and analytical choices, the assumptions you are making, as well as the limitations of your approach.
  • We do not require that you share your data at the time of submission, but we expect that by the time the editing process begins you will share (1) your data and relevant analytical tools (e.g., code, NVivo files) (2) a legally binding contract explaining why you cannot share your data, or (3) evidence of a statute that prohibits you from sharing your data. We reserve the right to rescind our offer for publication if we cannot substantiate your claims based on your data in the editing process.

2027 Administrative Law Symposium

• At this time, DLJ is accepting pieces for the 57th Annual Administrative Law Symposium. If your article’s connection to the field of administrative law is not obvious but you would like it to be considered for the Sypmosium, please provide a brief explanation of its connection to administrative law in the cover letter.
• If your article is selected for the Duke Law Journal Administrative Law Symposium Issue, you will be invited to speak at our Symposium which will take place in Durham, North Carolina in March 2027 and your article will be published in May 2027.