About The Green Bag

A Short Profile

There exists a gap in legal publishing. At one end of the spectrum, newspapers and news magazines report the legal events of the day; at the other, law reviews publish large-scale works of legal scholarship. But there is nothing in the middle – no place for scholars to toss out a creative thought, or make an argument that merits more than a letter to the editor but fewer than fifty footnotes. The solution: resurrect the Green Bag.

The Green Bag is not a new publication. From 1889 to 1914, it published material from scholars, practitioners, judges, and other public servants, including such luminaries as Louis Brandeis, Roscoe Pound, and Elihu Root. It covered a wide range of legal material, including discussions of federal, state, and municipal law, legal history, biographies of interesting judges and other heroes of the law, and law-related anecdotes and verse. Almost every contribution was short, well-written, only lightly footnoted, and thought-provoking. It was, in essence, a journal that appealed to those who valued useful and engaging reading on the legal issues of the day. This Second Series of the Green Bag, while not a duplicate of the original, seeks to capture its essence. Please read David Currie's Green Bags, 1 Green Bag 2d 1 (1997), a more eloquent introduction than the short one presented here.

This is our web site. It contains both reproductions of selected articles appearing in the bound version as well as other works that are particularly well-suited to the Web. We hope you enjoy the site and will take the time to explore it thoroughly. Perhaps you are interested in seeing who is willing to take up the fight for good legal writing. We've also posted the tables of contents for the printed version of the Green Bag. We occasionally reproduce articles on the web site, some of which have previously appeared in the Green Bag. "Eclectica" is where we post material to supplement the printed version of the Green Bag. Should you wish to subscribe to the ink-on-paper version of the Green Bag, we have provided a facility for that purpose. Of course, you can always find your favorite articles from the Green Bag on Lexis and Westlaw. Our site also contains information for those considering making a submission to the Green Bag. We welcome your comments and have provided a feedback page from which to send them.

The Editors