About the Legal Forum

Founded in 1985, The University of Chicago Legal Forum is the Law School’s second-oldest journal. The Legal Forum is a student-edited journal that focuses on a single cutting-edge legal issue every year, presenting an authoritative and timely approach to a particular topic.

Each fall, the Legal Forum hosts a symposium, with the participants then contributing articles for the volume. The November 2024 Symposium was entitled Crisis, Calamity, and Catastrophe: Law in Times of Disaster and will subsequently be published as Volume 2025. Topics in recent years have included Reimagining National Security, Borders and Boundaries, The Body, Law for the Next Pandemic,What’s the Harm? The Future of the First Amendment, Law in the Era of #MeToo, Law and the Disruptive Workplace, Policing the Police, Does Election Law Serve the Electorate?, The Civil Rights Act at 50 Years, Frontiers of Consumer Protection, Combating Corruption, Governance and Power, Crime Criminal Law and the Recession, Law in a Networked World, Immigration Law and Policy, Law and Life: Definitions and Decisionmaking, and Cutting-Edge Issues in Class Action Litigation.

Since our founding, several eminent members of academia, the judiciary, and the bar have participated in the Legal Forum symposia. Prior participants and published authors include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Judge Richard Posner, Judge Frank Easterbrook, Judge Diane Wood, Judge Abner Mikva, Judge Patricia Wald, Judge Danny Boggs, Dean Lee Bollinger, Professor Randall Kennedy, Professor Cass Sunstein, Professor Lani Guinier, Professor Richard Epstein, and Professor Akhil Reed Amar.