About the Journal

The Stetson Journal of Advocacy and the Law is the first online law review designed to be read online. It is a student-produced legal journal dedicated to discussing, exploring, and influencing contemporary issues related to oral and written advocacy. We publish articles on all facets of advocacy (including Alternative Dispute Resolution, Trial Advocacy, and Appellate Advocacy) written by pre-eminent practitioners, judges, law professors, and students.

We also aim to bring Stetson’s nationally-renowned techniques in advocacy to the rest of the legal community in a readable and informative publication.

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 Edge.

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.

If you are using a device with a reasonably wide browser window, 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 cellphones, the sidebar will appear at the foot of the page. A comprehensive menu will also be available in the top right-hand corner of your screen.

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.

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 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.

References

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. In the few cases 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.)

Citing the Journal

The Stetson Journal of Advocacy and the Law is an academic law review, published by one of the best legal advocacy schools in the nation. It needs therefore to be citable just like any other law review. Since there are no fixed pages of content in our extensible HTML format, as there are in hard copy publications or PDFs, we number every paragraph in every article for pinpoint citations.

Accordingly, we suggest the following citation style: 1 Stetson J. Advoc. & L. 67 (2014), where 1 represents the volume number and 67 represents the first paragraph number of the article. Pinpoint citations would then be rendered as, for example, 1 Stetson J. Advoc. & L. 67, 89 (2014), with 89 representing the specific paragraph to which the citation is intended to refer. It is advisable not to cite the page numbers of the PDF version of any article, since no page numbers appear either online or in the ePub or Kindle versions.

Submit an Article

If you would like to submit an article for us to consider for publication in the Journal, please email it to us at [email protected]. Articles should be between 3,000 and 10,000 words in length, single-spaced in a 12-point font, and in .lyx, .tex, .odt, .rtf, .docx, or .doc format.

If you wish to include pictures, charts, or other graphics, please attach the originals to your email.

Please note that we do not accept submissions by ExpressO, Scholastica, or in hard copy. Please also note that we only accept final drafts. If we publish your article, you will retain the copyright.

If we decide to publish your article, we will hyperlink all the references. We do not require that you insert such hyperlinks yourself, but feel free to do so if you wish. We do, however, have some specific requirements regarding the nature and substance of the footnotes.

While proper attribution of original thoughts and ideas, and accurate citation of sources, are hallmarks of good legal writing, there can be little doubt that many law review articles suffer from rabid footnoting that detracts from the quality of the work. There is also widespread agreement that few people read law review articles nowadays.

We wish to return somewhat to what might be termed the “heyday” of the law review, when articles were shorter and more readable (and were, therefore, actually read), and citations were kept to the essentials. We need also to take account of the requirements of our online medium.

Accordingly, we ask that narrative footnotes be avoided. If something is worth saying, it should be said in the body of the article; if it is not apposite there, it can safely be omitted. We also ask that all footnotes be written out in full: it is irritating for readers to find that a footnote says no more than id..

Moreover, if you wish to refer to one particular source throughout a paragraph, this can safely be done with just one footnote at the end of the paragraph. That always used to be standard practice, and it remains best practice.

Cases should be cited in Bluebook format, except where that imposes some requirement that is manifestly unnecessary or absurd. Parentheticals should, for example, normally be avoided (especially since the reference will be hyperlinked to the source in any event). For ease of use, references to cases and legislation in overseas jurisdictions should always be cited in the format used in the native jurisdiction.