This issue opens the first volume of Law & Society Review managed by the new editorial team. The journal and the field owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Jeannine Bell, Susan Sterett, and Margot Young, who ably stewarded the Review through the previous three volumes. In addition to supporting excellent sociolegal scholarship, they brought the journal into the twenty-first century with a new social media presence and greater participation by scholars from outside the US.
The editorial transition brings both continuity and change. The Review, which is the journal of the Law and Society Association, continues to be one of the premier sociolegal research outlets in the world, publishing discoveries from many fields and interdisciplinary perspectives, written by scholars from and investigating activity around the globe. The journal continues to benefit from the generosity and expertise of an international community of scholars through the practice of double-blind peer review.
The new editorial model hearkens back to the old days: an editor-in-chief works with a sitting editorial board of five scholars from different disciplines and methodological traditions. This board meets regularly to deliberate about manuscripts in real time. It has taken just over a year of that work to produce the issue that you see here. During that time, we have also endeavored to make the journal more accessible to potential authors and readers. Recognizing that sometimes authors with excellent ideas may not be familiar with the norms of peer-reviewed scholarship, the board has revised the submission guidelines to provide clearer direction about what reviewers expect from authors and what authors can expect from the double-blind peer review process. Because the fine work of LSR authors should be even more widely read, we are developing social media campaigns to promote individual articles. We have also sent out an open call for scholars to curate virtual special issues of the journal; these will provide another vehicle for original content at the same time that they bring more attention to work already published.
Many people have made the issue before you possible, and all are due thanks. Working with the editorial board is an education, a privilege, and a delight. In addition to the sitting board, the journal benefits from the expertise of an Editorial Advisory Board that spans disciplines, methods, theoretical traditions, and, increasingly, the globe. The managing editor and editorial assistants work diligently to ensure that manuscripts get reviewers, that authors get feedback, and that papers move as smoothly as possible through production and into print. The names on the masthead of the journal are in recognition of these many contributions. Authors do the hard work of research, writing and revision, while reviewers do the hard work of helping their colleagues at large make their good scholarship even better. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosted the initial months of the team's work. As of August, the journal moved to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. I am grateful to all these people and institutions for their contributions to the collective resource that is Law & Society Review.
