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Finding Topics For Your Papers and Journal Articles: Advice on selecting a topic

Your Greatest Challenge

—The Topic Must Engage You (you will be working on it for months....)
 
—Be timely and relevant
—On a novel topic
 
—Be of publishable quality…. and be
  •        Well-researched
  •        Well-written
  •         In CORRECT Bluebook format

Think about issues you heard about from...

  • Law journals and newsletters covering your field of interest
  • Class readings and casebook readings
  • Discussions with your editors, advisors, professors and librarians

THE HARDEST PART IS GENERATING THAT IDEA!

Profile

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Prof. Charles A. Pipins II
he/him/his
Contact:
University of Baltimore Law Library, Room 830
1401 N. Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
(410)837-4373

What Makes a Good Topic?

Originality and Contribution to the Legal Field

  • Legal writing should have a goal and recommend a means to achieve that goal
  • Articles should share new ideas about law with the legal community
  • Successful scholarly legal writing says something innovative
  • Be sure to run a thorough preemption check on your topic before you begin research

Importance of Topic

Writing should make a claim that is novel, non-obvious, useful, sound and seen by the reader as such.

Approaches: 

  • Analyze conflicting or transitional case law and resolve the conflict;
  • Argue that a legal rule is unfair or inequitable;
  • Analyze proposed or recently enacted legislation with comments and criticism;
  • Apply insights from another field in an effort to show how the legal issue can b; better dealt with
  • Explain the legal history of a rule or institution.

The "Spin"

Consider finding a niche to differentiate your article from others.  Well known approaches include examining a recent decision, analyzing split Circuit Court decisions, discussing cases of first impression , gathering the law in an area where this has not been done before and examining a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. 

Other approaches:

  • Law and/or regulatory reform
  • Legislative developments and their impact on legal and regulatory issues
  • Comparative analysis, e.g., between federal and state, between states and between the U.S. and foreign countries
  • Empirical research
  • Legal hisotry/history of reguation or legislation in a particular area
  • Theory - analyze and/or apply legal trends and theories
  • Interdisiplinary - The use of theories and practices in other disciplines