General Instructions

The editorial board of the SMU Science and Technology Law Review invites you to submit articles for publication. Articles will be considered that meet the Standards of Publication. We suggest that law review article submissions follow the Standard Law Review Format. Please also view our General Editorial Guidelines.

If you would like to submit an article for consideration, please e-mail it or send it to us at the following mailing address (if mailed, please include a softcopy on disk):

SMU Science and Technology Law Review

Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law

P.O. Box 750116

Dallas, Texas 75275-0116

Standards of Publication [Back to Top]

Topic

The SMU Science and Technology Law Review publishes articles dealing with the many substantive law issues affecting computers and technology. This includes patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, domain names, privacy rights, e-commerce issues, criminal law, dispute resolution, jurisdiction, comparative law, and other areas in which the use of technology raises new or interesting legal issues.

Style

All articles submitted must comply with a Uniform System of Citation and the Texas Rules of Form.

Interest

The author must disclose any personal, financial, or professional interest in any subject matter of the article.

Other Publications

The author must state whether the article has been or may be published elsewhere.

Standard Law Review Format [Back to Top]

If you are interested in getting published in the SMU Science and Technology Law Review, then there are two formats to choose from for writing your article. The first, and easiest, is a practitioner's article. This is a product review of some software or hardware that would be useful to attorneys. It could also discuss the use of technology in legal research. These are usually short and contain practical, as opposed to analytical, information.

The second choice is the standard law review format. An article in law review format would follow an outline such as this:

Brief Intro
1. What is the issue
2. Why is it important
3. What is the author's position or proposition
Legal Background
1. Factual History
2. Legal History
Exhaustive Discussion
1. Factual History
  1. Explain pertinent history
  2. What was unique about it
  3. Could history repeat itself
2. Legal History
  1. Explain pertinent history
  2. Why was the issue decided the way it was
    1. Influence of the facts
    2. Influence of people
    3. Influence of current philosophy
Discuss Open Issue
1. Remind the reader where we are today
2. What are its ramifications for today and for the future
3. How much does the factual and legal history influence today's thinking on the issue
Make proposal or take a position
1. Develop all the favorable arguments
  1. Explain each argument by
    1. Giving its advantages
    2. Giving its disadvantages
      1. Show why advantages outweigh disadvantages
  2. Conclusion of favorable arguments
2. Develop all the arguments against the proposal or position
  1. (Follow same procedure as "favorable arguments")
Step back and . . .
1. Look how your proposal or position supports:
  1. Public Policy
  2. Current Statutes
  3. Other scholar's theory
  4. Current political thought
Conclusion
1. Repeat Intro
2. Stress proposal or position

General Editorial Guidelines [Back to Top]

The SMU Science and Technology Law Review follows these general rules regarding format, citation, and language usage:

Articles typically range anywhere from 40 to 100 pages double-spaced;
Authors who want to have their articles considered for publication should submit both a double-spaced printed copy of the article and a disk copy of the article using either WordPerfect or Word, if possible;
Authors must use footnotes (as opposed to endnotes), and keep the use of special word processing codes to a minimum;
Authors should not hyphenate (i.e., at the right margin) unless they want the word always to have a hyphen;
Authors should not use right justification in their article;
Aauthors must strictly adhere to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, Seventeenth Edition, for rules on citation form;
The SMU Science and Technology Law Review refers to the Texas Law Review Manual on Style, Eighth Edition, for rules on grammar, punctuation, etc.

Without trying to dictate a particular writing style, the SMU Science and Technology Law Review offers the following thoughts on footnoting (because our publication is used not only as a direct source of information, but also as a research tool and a guidebook):

Footnote liberally;
Generally speaking, most sentences should be footnoted, and sentences that should not be footnoted are limited to:
- Statements of the author’s own viewpoint on a subject; statements or brief subsections of introduction or conclusion;
- Statements in a sequence that all come from the same source (including both the source and the same location in the source) that can be footnoted at the end of the sequence or at the end of the paragraph;
- Statements of fact from a cited case (but the author should footnote arguments of a party, and the author must cite any direct quotes and holdings of a court).

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The contents of this home page are the sole responsibility of the SMU Science and Technology Law Review and its contributors, and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of Southern Methodist University or the Dedman School of Law. The administrator of this site is Scott Jarratt, who may be contacted at sjarratt@mail.smu.edu.