Preparing your materials

Law & Social Inquiry (LSI) is a multidisciplinary quarterly journal that publishes wide-ranging research articles and review essays on sociolegal processes. The editors invite the submission of manuscripts that make original theoretical or empirical contributions to the understanding of law, legal institutions, and individuals' interactions with legal systems. Law & Social Inquiry embraces the broad range of perspectives and methodologies current in contemporary social science and humanities disciplines.

Law & Social Inquiry is a refereed journal that practices double-blind peer review. LSI asks that authors ensure manuscripts are anonymized prior to submission. Manuscripts are evaluated by three or more referees with expertise in the relevant subject matter and methodology.

Law & Social Inquiry will not consider any manuscript concurrently submitted for publication elsewhere.

Submission of a manuscript commits the author to publish the manuscript in Law & Social Inquiry if accepted for publication by the Editors.

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING A MANUSCRIPT

Submission Instructions

To submit an article manuscript, please go to Law & Social Inquiry’s ScholarOne Manuscripts homepage (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/lsi). Log in or click the ‘‘Create Account’’ option at the top-right corner of the log-in page if you are a first-time user.

After submitting your manuscript, you will receive a confirmation e-mail. You can also access ScholarOne Manuscripts at any time to check the status of your manuscript. The Journal will inform you once a decision has been made.

Please send any queries to: [email protected].

Manuscript Formatting

Manuscripts submitted to Law & Social Inquiry must be prepared using Microsoft Word. Please use Times New Roman 12 point font throughout (including text, notes, references, and quoted material). Double-space all text throughout (including notes, references, and quoted material) and use 1 inch margins on all sides (top, bottom, left, and right). Manuscripts must be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words. No identifying material should appear on the manuscript itself. Law & Social Inquiry requires submissions to adhere to a 15,000 word limit including footnotes and endnotes. Please be sure to include these in your word count when saving your file for submission. Any submitted manuscript that does not conform to this formatting or these limits may returned to the author for editing.

We do not require submitted manuscripts to be formatted according to Law & Social Inquiry's citation guidelines. Although all accepted articles will need to be brought into conformity with Law & Social Inquiry's in-text citation style, we will consider articles that use footnotes, including law-review style footnotes.

Pre-submission English-language Editing

Authors for whom English is a second language may choose to have their paper professionally edited before submission. Cambridge University Press offers a language-editing service in conjunction with a third-party provider, American Journal Experts:

http://www.cambridge.org/academic/author-services/.

Authors pay for this service individually, and there is no guarantee that their paper will be accepted to any journal should they use this service. Cambridge will continuously monitor the quality of the service provider.

REVIEW ESSAYS

Law & Social Inquiry publishes two sections of book essays and short book notes but not traditional book reviews.

Review Essays do not undergo traditional peer review, so please do not use ScholarOne Manuscripts to submit your essay. Authors of accepted Review Essays will be asked to add their piece to ScholarOne at a later stage.

US Books

Send books for review and inquiries regarding Review Essays on US books to:

Howard S. Erlanger Review Section Editor, Law & Social Inquiry Institute for Legal Studies Law School University of Wisconsin Madison, WI 53706 Telephone: 608-263-7405. Fax: 608-238-8003 E-mail: [email protected]

International Books

Send books for review and inquiries for our new International Book Essays section, publishing compact essays on notable works in sociolegal scholarship beyond the shores of the US to:

Terence Halliday

American Bar Foundation

Via [email protected]

Review Essays accepted for publication must be brought into conformity with Law & Social Inquiry's format and style requirements before they can enter our production queue (see below). Please follow the guidelines below.

FORMATTING AND STYLE REQUIREMENTS FOR ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTS

After acceptance and prior to submitting the final copy to Law & Social Inquiry, authors must undertake a careful review of style, syntax, grammar, and spelling, and must verify that the references cited in the text are consistent with those in the source citation section. Authors are asked to do their best to ensure that their manuscript adheres to the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), 17th Edition. All articles and review essays accepted for publication must be brought into conformity with the following style and formatting requirements before they enter production. Please note that failure to follow these guidelines may result in the return of your manuscript for reformatting. Any concerns or questions should be directed to [email protected].

We request that you prepare your final draft using Microsoft Word.

Please note that your manuscript may exceed the 15,000 word limit at this point, but we ask for your discretion when submitting especially lengthy articles.

Title Page

Please make the first page of the manuscript your title page. Do not number the title page. The title page must include the following information:

The full title of the manuscript
Running head, if desired
Name(s) of author (s). If there is more than one author, please indicate who the contact author is. Do not use endnote numbering or symbols (asterisks, etc.) by the author’s name to reference an author note. Endnote numbering should begin in the body of the manuscript
Full postal address, phone number, email address for contact author

Please include a biographical statement for each author written in full sentences, not abbreviated statements. Author statements will be included in the published article. Please include the following:

Professional identity (e.g., Professor of Sociology at Kenyon College)
Affiliated e-mail address
Acknowledgements (professional acknowledgements only, not personal acknowledgements. LSI editors should not be included in the scholarly acknowledgments)
Funding statement including sources of funding for research, including grant numbers (if applicable)
Competing interests statement should there be any conflicts of interest to declare
Information on IRB approvals (if applicable)
Author statements should not include lists of books or essays published by the author unless directly related to the manuscript being published

Review Essay Authors: In the subtitle, please include a complete citation of the book(s) under review.

Example:

Robertson, Stephen. Crimes Against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Abstract Page

The second page of your manuscript should be your abstract page. Begin numbering pages on the abstract page.

Manuscript Authors: The abstract should be no more than 200 words in length.

Review Essay Authors: The text of the abstract must include mention of author(s), title(s) and publication date(s) of the work(s) under review. For the remainder of the abstract, please do not exceed 100 words.

All Authors: Online electronic search engines are increasingly guiding readers by text- searching titles and abstracts. Titles and abstracts are therefore very important for attracting potential readers to your article. We recommend that both titles and abstracts adhere to the following guidelines:

Provide a clear, descriptive title
Ensure that your title contains the most important words that relate to the article topic
Reiterate key phrases in your abstract; the number of times your keywords and phrases appear can have an effect
Focus on a maximum of three or four keyword phrases in the abstract
Note that potential readers tend to search using specific descriptive phrases or combinations of keywords rather than single words

Style Rules

Spacing: All text, including indented quotations, endnotes, and references must be double spaced

Font: Please use Times New Roman, 12 point font (including headings, endnotes, indented quotations, and references).

Margins: Please ensure your document has 1-inch margins on all sides (left, right, top, bottom).

Alignment: Text, section headings, the reference section, and endnotes should be left-aligned. Please do not justify or center.

Paragraphs: Please begin each paragraph with an indented sentence (do not left-align the first sentence) and do not leave an extra space between paragraphs.

Embedded Information: Please remove any embedded information (headers, footers, endnotes, etc.) and prepare regular endnotes instead. Endnotes are correctly inserted if they are visible when the document is in “Print Layout” mode.

Section Headings: Format primary sections titles (i.e., introduction and conclusion) in Sentence case and bolded. Format secondary section titles with Sentence case, italicized, and bolded. Format tertiary section titles with Sentence case and italicized. We prefer no more than three levels of headings. If using secondary sections, there should be at least two sections per primary section; if using tertiary sections, there should be at least two sections per secondary section.

Endnotes and Footnotes: Please use endnotes, not footnotes, and do not embed them. Notes will ultimately appear as footnotes when the journal is typeset, but for copyediting purposes we require that final drafts use endnotes. Please use superscript numbers in your endnotes. Endnotes are used for explaining or elucidating matters discussed in the main body of the text. Please do not place figures or lengthy tabulations in endnotes. Authors who anticipate a need to use endnotes for complex citations, figures, or tabulations contrary to these instructions must advise LSI.

Tables, Figures and Graphics: Tables and Figures must be numbered, followed by a period, i.e. “Fig.1.” or “Figure 1.” Single-sentence captions do not need punctuation; multi- sentence captions require a period. Please ensure that all tables, figures and graphics are provided in an editable format and should be of a suitable quality and resolution to be printed. We prefer these to be created using Word. Do not embed these files in the manuscript – they must be supplied in separate files, one file per figure. Please label consecutively throughout the manuscript and indicate the position of figures, tables and graphics in the text as follows:

Figure 1: INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

Figures, tables and graphic reproduced from already published work must be accompanied by the permission of the original publisher (or copyright holder, if not the publisher). Full information on how to prepare and supply tables, figures and graphics can be found here.

Numbers:

Spell out whole numbers up to and including one hundred (e.g., zero, one, ten, ninety-six, 104).
Round numbers: spell out whole numbers up to and including one hundred when followed by "hundred," "thousand," "hundred thousand," "million," "billion," and so on (e.g., eight hundred, 12,908, three hundred thousand, twenty-seven trillion).
Abbreviated units of measurement should be spelled out, i.e. 24 kilograms.
Spell out “percent” in text and notes: 50 percent. Use symbol in tables and figures: 50%.

Colons:

Do not capitalize the first letter of a word following a colon unless it is a full quotation. Examples:
- She makes note of the features of society from which formerly incarcerated individuals are excluded: “welfare, housing benefits, food stamps, and jobs.”
- She notes: “Formerly incarcerated individuals experience restricted access to housing benefits, food stamps, welfare, and jobs.”
Capitalize the first letter of the word following the colon if one or more sentences follow the colon. Example:
- Several questions arose: Why did we do this? What did it accomplish?"

Hyphenation:

Most words that begin with pre, post, anti, non, etc. do not need a hyphen.
Fractions are hyphenated, i.e. two-thirds or three-fourths.
Age terms: hyphenate nouns and adjectives. Example: three-year-old child, eight-to-ten-year jail term.
Decision making (noun), decision-making (adjective).
E-mail (use hyphen).
Policymaking (noun); policy-making (adjective).
Rule of law (noun), rule-of-law (adjective).
Do not hyphenate adverbial phrases ending in “ly.” Example: highly paid official.
No hyphen: lawmaking (as a noun and adjective).

Abbreviations and Acronyms: In its first appearance, spell out the full name of the organization, with the acronym or abbreviation in parentheses. Example: American Bar Foundation (ABF). You may then use the abbreviation/acronym alone throughout the article.

Contractions: Contractions are acceptable in quotations but we advise to generally abstain from using them in the text.

Foreign Language Words: Foreign language words that appear infrequently in the text should be in italics. Foreign words that occur several times in the text should be italicized only in the first instance of their use.

Latin words that appear in a US-English dictionary are not italicized. Example: ad hoc.

Other:

Democratic, Republican, Communist, Federalist, Green, Labor Party: “Party” is capitalized. If not specified, use lowercase: “the party.”
e.g.= for example (do not use with citations).
i.e. = that is.
Toward (not towards).
United States (noun), US (adjective, no period). Ex: US Constitution.

In-Text Citations

Law & Social Inquiry uses the in-text, author/date citation system supplemented by a full bibliographic reference section. We adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), 17th Edition. For a quick guide of the CMS refer to: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

In-text citations should appear in the body of the text following the material to which they refer. Include the last name(s) of the author(s), the year of publication, and page numbers in parentheses, with a comma separating the page numbers from the rest of the citation. Citations for directly quoted texts should always include specific page numbers identifying the quoted material.

If the source is unpublished, insert “n.d.” for the date. If the source is scheduled for future publication, insert “forthcoming” for the date. Citations of a body of work with three authors or fewer should always include the names of all authors. For pieces with four or more authors, use “et al.” following the name of the first author.

Multiple citations should be separated by a semicolon and be listed in chronological order, unless they reflect the relative importance of the items cited.

References to multiple publications by a single author or group of authors appearing in the same year should be distinguished by adding letters (a, b, c, etc.) to the year.

Works without a personal author, as is often the case with websites or works published by corporations, are cited in the same manner, with the organization name replacing the author name, i.e. (American Bar Foundation 2017, 10-20). If the author of a book or journal article is unknown, you may substitute the title of the work (or a shortened form of the title) for the author’s name.

There is no need to indicate that a reference
was edited or translated (by writing “ed.” or “trans.”) in your in-text
citations.

Examples

In-text Citations for Books, Journal Articles, Internet Documents, and Chapters in an Edited Book

“Quote” (Lockhart et al. 1991, 253-54)
“Quote” (Thomas 1973, 102-09)
“Quote” (Nelson and Philips n.d., 11)
“Quote” (Thomas forthcoming, 22)
“Quote” (Thomas 1973, 102-09; Trelease 1971, Benedict 1974a; Foner 1998)
Examples:
- In the final chapter of Madness and Civilization, Foucault (1961) discusses the decline of general hospitals and the advent of the mental asylum.
- According to Foucault, the asylum’s job was to
- “assure an ethical continuity between the world of madness and the world of reason” (1961, 259).

Newspapers or Magazines

Cite newspaper page numbers in the text, but please do not include them in the references list.
- (Bayard 1965)
- (Jenkins 2001, 33)
Use the newspaper title in the in-text citation if the author is unknown.
- (LIFE 1963, 102)
Note: The CMS 17th edition notes that newspapers are typically not included in the references list, but LSI requests that authors add their newspaper cites to this list.

Interviews and Personal Communications

The interview information in the text is to be proceeded by the interviewee’s name and then “pers. comm.” (for “personal communication”) or “unpublished data.” Indicate the year if possible, but it is not necessary. Example:
- In July 2015, Professor X indicated that “quote” (Professor X, pers. comm).
Please cite unpublished interviews in the main text or in endnotes. Please include the name of the interviewer and interviewee, appropriate identifying information, the place and date of the interview, and where the transcript or recording of the interview may be found, if available. (Published interviews may be cited in the references list; see next section). Example:
- John Hagan (sociology professor at Northwestern), interview by Jane Smith, March 15, 2017, interview 3A, transcript.
*For a published interview, specify the year, interview publication source, and interviewee. Example:
- In a 2015 interview with X magazine, X person indicates that “quote”

Paper Presented at a Meeting or Conference & Theses and Dissertations

Please follow the text with:

(last name of presenter, year of presentation) OR
(name of thesis author, date of publication)

Cases and Statutes

*For more details, see chapter 15.59 on the CMS website. The site provides the following examples of citing legal documents, though advises that such citations are reserved for footnotes whenever possible.

In NLRB v. Somerville Constr. Co. (206 F.3d 752 (7th Cir. 2000)), the court ruled that . . .
In the Congressional Record for that day (147 Cong. Rec. 19,000 (2001)), Senator Conrad Burns was reported as saying that . . .

Archival Sources

Please see chapter 15.54 of the CMS online. The following is from their website:

15.54: Manuscript Collections in the Author-Date Style:

“When citing manuscript collections in the author-date style, it is unnecessary to use n.d (no date) in place of the date. Dates of individual items should be mentioned in the text, when applicable.

Egmont Manuscripts. Phillipps Collection. University of Georgia Library.
Kallen, Horace. Papers. YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.
Oglethorpe wrote to the trustees on January 13, 1733 (Egmont Manuscripts), to say ...
Alvin Johnson, in a memorandum prepared sometime in 1937 (Kallen Papers, file 36), observed that ...

If only one item from a collection has been mentioned in the text, however, the entry may begin with the writer’s name (if known). In such a case, the use of n.d. may become appropriate. See also 15.44.

Dinkel, Joseph. n.d. Description of Louis Agassiz written at the request of Elizabeth Cary Agassiz. Agassiz Papers. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
(Dinkel, n.d.) ”

References List

Full bibliographic details of all materials cited, quoted, or paraphrased in the text should appear at the conclusion of the main text, organized in separate lists in the following order: References, Cases Cited (if any), Statutes Cited (if any). Authors may not include “General,” “Background,” or “Informational” lists that refer to sources consulted but not cited.

Authors are solely responsible for verifying the accuracy of all bibliographic information; Cambridge’s proofreaders and copyeditors and Law & Social Inquiry staff will not check for accuracy.

Please list references in alphabetical order by authors’ last names. Unless the author uses only first-name initials in the original publication, supply the full names of authors. In cases of multiple authorship, the first and last names of the first author are inverted, but those of additional authors are not. Titles of works that appear in non-Roman alphabets should appear in square brackets immediately following the original title. If the source is unpublished, insert “n.d.” for the date, and if in your possession, insert “in author’s possession.” If the source is scheduled for future publication, insert “forthcoming” for the date.

Two or more references by the same author should be listed chronologically in the order of the year of publication (older references first) with three em-dashes in place of the author’s name when the authorship is the same as the preceding citation, followed by a period. References to multiple publications by a single author or group of authors appearing in the same year should be listed in alphabetical order by title.

When listing the place of publication, there is no need to follow a well-known city with its corresponding state in your citations. For example, you may just write Chicago rather than Chicago, IL (see examples below).

Note: Some endnote/footnote software does not format according to our guidelines. If using such software, please verify whether the formatting or references needs manual correction. (For example, some endnote/footnote software inserts colons where the CMS uses commas, some software places publication dates later in the entry, etc.).

EXAMPLES

Books

One Author:

Feeley, Malcolm M. 1979. The Process is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Two Authors:

Denzin, Norman, and Yvonna Lincoln. 2000. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Non First-Edition:

Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm Strauss. 2008. Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 3rd ed. New York: Sage.

Works by the Same Author:

Reosti, Anna. 2020. “‘We Go Totally Subjective’: Discretion, Discrimination, and Tenant Screening in a Landlord’s Market.” Law & Social Inquiry 45, no. 3: 618–57.

———. After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Workplace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.

Translated Books:

Weber, Max. 2009. Essays in Sociology, translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Routledge.

Chapter in a Book:

Sarat, Austin, and Thomas R. Kearns. 1995. “Beyond the Great Divide: Forms of Legal Scholarship and Everyday Life.” In Law in Everyday Life, edited by A. S. and T. R. Kearns,. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Article, Chapter, or Selection from an Edited Collection:

Pattillo, Mary, Bruce Western, and David Weiman (eds.). 2004. Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Introduction, Preface, or Forward of a Book:

Lukes, Steven. 2014. Introduction to The Division of Labor in Society, by Emile Durkheim, xxv–xliii. New York: Free Press.

Journal Articles

Article in a Print Journal:

Suchman, Mark C., and Lauren B. Edelman. 1996. “Legal Rational Myths: The New Institutionalism and the Law and Society Tradition.” Law & Social Inquiry 21, no. 4: 903–41.

Article in an Online Journal:

Hoekstra, Pieter J. 2017. “Looking Beyond Randomized Control Trials.” European Child + Adolescent Psychiatry 26, no. 385: 385-86. doi:10.1007/s00787-017-0978-y.

*No need to list access date.

Newspapers and Magazines

Bayard, Rustin. 1965. “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement.” Commentary Magazine, February 1, 1965.

*Include a URL followed by a period at the end of the citation if found online.

Book Reviews

Kotlowitz, Alex. 2014. “Deep Cover: Alice Goffman’s ‘On the Run.’” Review of On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City, by Alice Goffman. New York Times, June 26, 2014, Sunday Book Review.

*Include a URL followed by a period at the end of the citation if found online.

Paper Presented at Meeting or Conference

Cheesman, Nick. 2017. “Theorizing about Torture.” Paper presented at the American Bar Foundation Seminar Series, Chicago, IL, April 12, 2017.

Dissertations

Brandwein, Pamela Teal. 1994. “Reconstructing Reconstruction: The Supreme Court and the Production of Historical Knowledge.” PhD diss., Northwestern University.

*If a Master’s thesis, substitute “Master’s thesis” for “PhD diss.”

Websites

Websites are to be cited as follows:

Last name, first name. Year. “Web Page Title.” Name of Website or Publishing Organization.

Publication date or access date. URL.

*Use n.d. in place of "Year" if no publication date is available.

Web Page with Known Author and Date:

Wacquant, Loïc. “Recent Papers.” Loïc Wacquant. Last modified January 2016. http://loicwacquant.net/papers...

Web Page with Known Date but without Known Author:

Use corporate author instead.

Web Page with Unknown Date and Unknown Author:

Use web page title instead of author name.

Interviews

Begin citation with name of interviewee. Include identifying information of interviewee and where interview may be found (transcript or recording) if possible.

Published or Broadcast Interviews:

Include a URL for interviews consulted online. Include the medium of interview (i.e. audio or written). Example from CMS site:

Bellour, Raymond. 1979. “Alternation, Segmentation, Hypnosis: Interview with Raymond Bellour.” By Janet Bergstrom. Camera Obscura, nos. 3–4 (Summer 1979): 89–94.

*See Chapter 14.213 of the CMS online for additional examples.

Unpublished Interviews:

Please cite unpublished interviews in the main text or in endnotes (see preceding section)

Cases and Statutes

Cases:

Include statute and case reference information on separate lists in the source citation section with the items listed in alphabetical order.

From the CMS site, section 14.276:

"Full case names in citations, including the abbreviation v., are set in roman in notes; short forms in subsequent citations are italicized (as are full case names mentioned in textual sentences; see example 3). Full citations include volume number (arabic), abbreviated name of the reporter(s), the ordinal series number of the reporter (if applicable), the abbreviated name of the court (if not indicated by the reporter) and the date together in parentheses, and other relevant information (see 14.279). A single page number designates the opening page of a decision; an additional number designates an actual page cited. In a shortened citation, at is used to cite a particular page (example 3); absence of at implies reference to the decision as a whole (example 4). See also 14.272, 14.275."

United States v. Christmas, 222 F.3d 141, 145 (4th Cir. 2000).
Profit Sharing Plan v. Mbank Dallas, N.A., 683 F. Supp. 592 (N.D. Tex. 1988).
Christmas, 222 F.3d at 145. The court also noted that under United States v. Sokolow, 490 U.S. 1, 7 (1989), police may briefly detain a person without probable cause if the officer believes criminal activity “may be afoot.” Christmas, 222 F.3d at 143; see also Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).
Profit Sharing Plan, 683 F. Supp. 592.

Cases consulted online should normally be cited to the appropriate reporter(s). Though rarely used in Bluebook-style citations, a URL that points directly to an official resource may be appended as shown here (see also 14.6).

State v. Griffin, 211 W. Va. 508, 566 S.E.2d 645 (2002), http://www.courtswv.gov/supreme-court/docs/spring2002/30433.htm.

When a commercial electronic database is cited, include the docket number, name of the database, and any identifying date and number supplied by the database. References to page or screen numbers are preceded by an asterisk. Short forms may include only the database identifier.

Family Serv. Ass’n v. Wells Twp., No. 14-4020, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 6174 (6th Cir. Apr. 16, 2015).
In re D.S., No. 13-0888, 2014 WL 1495489 (Iowa Ct. App. Apr. 16, 2014).
Family Serv. Ass’n, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 6174, at *5.
D.S., 2014 WL 1495489, at *1.