According to this site:
The Northwestern Colloquy will be the first scholarly weblog to be operated by a major law review. It will feature legal commentary written in the form of blog posts. This new format will allow scholars to publish their thoughts within days of an emerging legal development. The subject matter can be anything within the field of legal inquiry, whether a short exposition of a new idea, an analysis of an emerging legal topic, an ongoing debate regarding a legal issue, or a short response to an already published piece of scholarship. Readers can rely upon the Law Review to ensure that citations in these pieces support the assertions made in the posts. We will also be allowing comments on these pieces in a moderated forum. We hope that this new feature will serve as both an attractive new way in which to publish ideas and as a meeting place for far-flung scholars to interact and refine their work.
Additionally, for those who wish to publish pieces that straddle the border between the depth and rigor of an article and the speed and brevity of a blog post or an op-ed, the Colloquy will regularly publish short pieces of scholarship, of no more than 5000 words and 40 footnotes. These short pieces will be initially published on the web, and subsequently added to a print volume of the Law Review. This will drastically shorten the amount of time that lapses between the conception of an idea and the possibility of its publication in a major law review from more than a year to less than three months. Just as with the blog posts on the Colloquy, students will provide authors who contribute these short pieces with the editing and citation-checking services that are a hallmark of legal publication.
Learn more here. Note that the posted comment policy is as follows:
In order to maintain the comments threads on the Colloquy as a safe and productive forum for academic discussion, the Law Review will strictly monitor all comments to ensure compliance with the following standards:
1. All comments must be worded in a respectful and scholarly fashion. The Law Review will enforce a zero-tolerance policy against any commenters who employ harrassing or abusive language, employ personal invective in the place of argument, or fail to engage in respectful, appropriate standards of discussion.
2. All comments must address the substance of the post to which they are responding.
3. No commenter shall use the Colloquy to promote services or merchandise other than academic work.
4. All comments must comply with the University’s Policy Statements.
5. All commenters must include a valid e-mail address, and their real name. No anonymous postings will be permitted.
All comments must be approved by Law Review staff before they will be posted. The Law Review reserves the right to edit or refuse to publish any comment that we determine, in our discretion, to be a violation of these policies. Whenever practicable, we will notify a commenter if we choose to edit or delete their comment. If we determine that any commenter has repeatedly failed to abide by the comment policy, we will cease to approve any comments by that person. We reserve the right to block IP addresses and take other measures to prevent comment abuse in extreme cases.
Via The Legal Theory Blog. As has recently been discussed at Stone Court, the feminist blogosphere can sometimes seem like an angry and hostile place itself, rather than a respite from the endemic misogyny of the Internet. If more blogs implemented at least some of these rules, perhaps the tone and content of the discourse would improve, and that might lead to increased participation by people it would be valuable to hear from.
–Ann Bartow
