About the Review
Est. 2025Serious engagement with the law does not require a law degree — only careful reading, honest argument, and a willingness to be edited.
The Bowdoin Undergraduate Law Review publishes original legal scholarship written and edited entirely by undergraduates. We publish twice yearly across constitutional law, jurisprudence, legal history, law and society, and international law, with a standing interest in the legal questions particular to Maine and the Northeast.
Every submission is read blind by at least two staff editors and returned with written comments, whether or not it is accepted. We think that is the more useful half of what a review does.
In this issue
Vol. I · No. 1The Vanishing Trial in Maine's District Courts
Fewer than two percent of criminal matters in Maine reach a jury. This article asks what the plea-bargaining apparatus has replaced, and whether the substitution is visible from the gallery.
After Loper Bright: What Deference Meant, and What Replaced It
A reading of the forty years of administrative practice that Chevron organized, and an argument that its successor doctrine is less a rupture than a redistribution.
Riparian Doctrine and the Kennebec
The Edwards Dam removal is usually told as an environmental story. Told as a property story, it is stranger and more consequential.
Standing on Thin Ice: Injury-in-Fact in Climate Litigation
The doctrinal bottleneck that decides climate cases long before anyone reaches the merits.
Submissions
Open to all undergraduatesWe accept unsolicited submissions from undergraduates at any institution. Papers written for coursework are welcome and are, in practice, most of what we publish. Submissions are reviewed blind — remove identifying information from the manuscript and include it in the accompanying email instead.
- Length
- 3,000 – 10,000 words
- Citation style
- Bluebook, 22nd ed.
- File format
- .docx, double-spaced
- Review process
- Blind, two readers
- Fall deadline
- 1 November
- Spring deadline
- 1 March
Placeholder policy — deadlines, word counts, and citation style are yours to set. Replace before launch.