It’s a given in the legal academy that publication in the Harvard Law Review is prestigious. Whether it’s the most important law review is a matter of debate, but that it is important is beyond question. Law profs submit their articles to this student-run journal because it accomplishes two important things. First, it establishes their bona fides as a legal scholar. Second, it means their article is taken seriously, Given the desperate need of most prawfs to be taken seriously rather than fade into the universe of legal background noise, it’s one of the few places where they can “matter.”

But as Aaron Sibarium writes in the Washington Free Beacon, articles that make the cut at HLR might not reflect important legal thought, but rather that they checked the woke boxes of race, gender and sexuality.

“The Review does not consider race, ethnicity, gender, or any other protected characteristic as a basis for recommending or selecting a piece for publication,” the journal wrote in a fact sheet published on May 27.

But according to new documents obtained by the Free Beacon, the law review eliminates more than 85 percent of submissions using a rubric that asks about “author diversity.” And 40 percent of journal editors have cited protected characteristics when lobbying for or against articles—at one point killing a piece by an Asian-American scholar, Alex Zhang, after an editor complained in a meeting that “we have too many Yale JDs and not enough Black and Latino/Latina authors.”

Aaron goes on to provide examples of how student editors, already a dubious concept given their limited grasp of what’s legally significant and their qualifications to decide what articles by academics are worthy of publication, advocated for, and against, articles based not on their merits, quality or importance to the law, but on whether the author was marginalized, whether citations were to articles by “old white men” or whether the article advanced DEI.

The law review has said that it vets articles based solely on “their quality and contribution to legal scholarship.” But in at least 87 cases identified by the Free Beacon—including 75 from the volume published last year alone—the journal considered protected traits or encouraged its members to do so.

Editors complained that a piece had cited “A LOT of old white men,” attempted to guess whether a scholar was “Latina,” complained that an author was “not from an underrepresented background,” and praised an article for citing “predominantly Black singers, rappers, and members of Twitter.”

Another article was recommended, in part, because “it cites a Kendrick song in the Conclusion!”

Who wouldn’t publish an article because it cites a Kendrick song, whoever he is?

While some editors recommended pieces on the grounds that the author was a minority, others paid more attention to the article’s footnotes, combing through the citations to see how many sources were white, black, or transgender.

“The author cited 20 men by name,” Leah Smith, who graduated Harvard Law School in May, wrote of one article, but only “9 women and 1 non-binary scholar.”

Notably, the fact that improper considerations influenced decision-making by student editors does not mean that the articles published were not of exceptional quality. Indeed, it may well be that because it was Harvard Law Review, it received so many top quality submissions that it was able to publish articles that were both of the highest quality and significant, as well as by authors who fit their DEI ideology.

At the same time, using the rubric that rates articles by such factors as race, gender and sexuality, for publication suggests that exceptional articles written by “old white men,” or young ones for that matter, were not given the consideration based on quality and significance they deserved. In other words, there were great law review articles submitted that never stood a chance of making it into the venerable HLR, not because they were substantively unworthy, but because their author had the wrong skin color or failed to use the word “Black” with sufficient frequency.

The Free Beacon also found numerous examples of articles that were penalized because they did not do enough to promote “DEI values,” with one editor dinging a piece for only using the word “Black” seven times.

“Two of those are not referring to the racial category,” Smith said of the article, which had opened by describing the death of a 25-year-old black man at the hands of the police. “I do not think it is acceptable for us to publish an article reckoning with the criminal legal system and police violence that so flimsily engages with race.”

It may well be argued that Harvard Law Review, prestige aside, doesn’t matter outside the ivy-covered walls of academia. After all, it’s not as if lawyers or judges read it, and it’s not as if the vast majority of law review articles aren’t two-pages of thought spread out over 50 pages of empty verbiage. But still, it exists and should be honest about what it’s doing. If it’s not publishing the most worthy articles, then its legacy reputation should be amended to recognize that it’s just another ideological journal of little importance to anyone in the law, and merely a vehicle for ideological pursuits.