How to Write a Peer Review Article on Law

Law is the body of rules and regulations that are created, enforced or accepted by a system of governments and courts to protect rights, order behaviour, or secure justice. It shapes politics, economics, history and society and serves as a mediator of relationships between people.

A law is a rule that is enacted by a government, usually by statute or judicial decree. It is also called a ‘law’, ‘Act’ or’statute’, and can be found in the legal code of a country.

It is a complex subject, covering the whole of human life, from individual rights and contracts to property, health and safety. It is divided into three broad categories for convenience: civil law, criminal law and regulatory or administrative law.

Choosing a relevant research question is the first step in writing a law review article, and will help you to focus your work. Once you have chosen a topic, immerse yourself in the area, read widely and identify unanswered questions.

The next step is to write a well-argued article that addresses the research question you have chosen. Using good research methods and citing relevant case law will help you to develop a robust argument that will stand up in peer review.

You must be clear and concise, but at the same time avoid cliches like the plague. This will keep your readers reading and interested in what you have to say, rather than putting them off by a lack of original phrasing.

One of the key features of Hohfeldian relations is that they provide right-holders a measure of normative control over themselves and others, which gives them “small-scale sovereign[s]” over certain domains (Hart 1982: 183-4). This function of rights fits with the Will Theory of Normative Control, in which claims-rights and immunities provide “choices” for how one may act or exercise powers, and Hohfeldian privileges grant rights-holders the power to annul, waive, enforce, or transfer duties owed by others (MacCormick 1977: 193-4; Simmonds 1998: 218-220).

In principle, rights are peremptory, which means that they exclude all conflicting reasons for doing something. However, in practice they are often defeasible, which entails that their scope is limited by the demands of their duties and by the conflicting reasons they trump or exclude.

There is a growing interest in the relationship between law and morality, with many scholars seeing law as a means of resolving moral dilemmas. In this way, legal rights are a source of social cohesion and mutuality, which in turn may be more effective in resolving conflict than other means of regulating behavior.

A common theme of jurisprudence is that a moral justification for any given legal right must derive from reasons that go beyond the interests protected by the right in question. This is particularly true when rights are derived from amoral, self-serving interests. For example, a right of exploitation to exploit tax havens may be regarded as morally justified only if the right-holder can demonstrate that such a violation of another person’s duty is necessary for the right-holder to achieve his or her amoral purposes.