Reading the Journal

The Stetson Journal of Advocacy and the Law has been designed to provide a pleasurable reading experience for anyone with an internet connection and a modern browser, such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, or Internet Explorer 9 or above. (The Journal will not work properly with previous versions of Internet Explorer.)

Of course, every device has a different screen size, and the Journal format will respond to whatever size of browser window you are using. This means that it can be read on devices as large as a desktop PC with a widescreen monitor or TV screen, or as small as a cellphone. Naturally, this means that the Journal will not look quite the same for everyone — but the content of the Journal always remains the same.

You might not be aware, however, that the fonts we have chosen for the Journal will not be displayed on your device if you do not have them installed. To see the Journal on laptops and desktops as we intend, we recommend that you download and install the free set of Deja Vu fonts, available here.

If you are using a laptop or larger device, you will see a sidebar on the left-hand side of your screen that will enable you to navigate to current and past issues of the Journal, as well as to the main site of Stetson University College of Law and to the site of the Center for Excellence in Advocacy. When you select an article to read, its contents will also appear in the sidebar. The sidebar will stay on screen as you scroll through each article, so you should never get lost! Links to our editorial pages also appear at the top and foot of every page.

For those using smaller tablets and other devices with smaller screens, the sidebar will appear at the foot of the page. We also provide a special mobile version for cellphones, which is designed for the default browsers on iPhones, Android, and Blackberry devices.

Readers using the Opera Mobile browser will probably prefer the main view, so we offer the ability to switch between versions via the drop-down menu on the welcome page. A link to switch back to the mobile view is also provided on the main version’s welcome page at the top of the sidebar.

Please note that you can also return to the welcome page at any time by clicking on the Journal‘s name at the top of every page or, on the Journal‘s mobile version, on the home button.

If you prefer to read offline, or simply like to have articles downloaded to your own hardware, just click on one of the links at the end of each article to download it in PDF, ePub, or mobi (i.e. Kindle) format. You may also use the standard print function in your browser to create PDFs, although this method will render all the hyperlinks dead.

If you experience any problems reading the Journal, or have any comments or suggestions regarding its format, please email our webmaster at webadvoc@law.stetson.edu.

Our articles are referenced and footnoted in the same way as in any academic law review — but with two twists.

First, since there are no fixed page sizes online, the footnotes are not to be found at the bottom of a page. Instead, each footnote can be accessed simply by drawing your mouse or other pointing device over the footnote number. The text of the footnote will then “hover” to the right in a white box. For those whose devices do not support this function, we also list the references as endnotes at the foot of each article. Clicking on an endnote’s number will take you to the place in the main text to which the endnote is linked.

Second, you will see that references contained in footnotes are, wherever possible, hyperlinked to the original source material if it is available online. This means that cases, statutes, and other articles cited in the Journal can be accessed immediately by means of a simple left or right click.

We try to hyperlink to free, publicly-available sources when we can but, when that is not possible, we link to databases that require a password (such as Westlaw, LexisNexis, or HeinOnline). If you are subscriber to the relevant database, you will be able to access the source by entering your regular user name and password for that site when it asks you for them. (If you are already logged in to the site, you will be taken straight to the cited source.)

Happy reading!