Tomorrow marks the debut of a new journal:  The Harvard Law and Policy Review.  I am pleased as punch  because my students founded the journal.  But I’m also pleased because they have a vision to integrate policy and academic debates that I believe in.  So far, the journal is off to a good start, with Charles Schumer weighing in on separation of powers and Patricia Wald responding.  In addition to a senator and a circuit court judge, the other participants include scholars from political science, law, private foundations, and a variety of other experiences and backgrounds.  There’s even room for online commentary from readers. 

What particularly excites me is that the journal features middle class economic issues front-and-center.  Grouped together as part of a discussion on reducing the price of opportunity, the journal has pulled in Jacob Hacker for a piece on the new economic insecurity, Michael Lind on the smallholder society, Michael Barr focusing on savings, and a piece from my coauthors and me on paying for college. 

In my view, economic issues of the kind we commercial law folks discuss have been second-class citizens:  not as sexy as multi-billion dollar corporate finance twists nor as profound as interpreting the Constitution.  Sure, the bankruptcy debates went public, but generally commercial law has been regarded as something for technocrats (read: boring).  Serious policy debate designed to appeal to a broad audience either in the academy or the public needed to focus on other subject areas. 

This has been a mistake.  The economic issues that are buffeting the middle class–and the legal policy decisions that assist or retard that buffeting–are of central intellectual, economic, and political importance.  Our stuff matters.  In their first issue of HLPR, the editors seem to agree. 

I don’t know what the journal will take on next, but focusing on economic opportunity in the first issue gives me hope.