The Path of the Law Review: How Interfield Ties Contribute to Institutional Emergence and Buffer against Change

Abstract

Early neoinstitutional theory tended to assume institutional reproduction, while recent accounts privilege situations in which alternative models from outside an organizational environment or delegitimizing criticism from within precipitate institutional change. We know little about institutions that persist despite such change conditions. Recent advances in sociological field theory suggest that interfield ties contribute to institutional change but under‐theorize how such ties may reinforce institutions. Extending both approaches, I incorporate self‐reinforcing mechanisms from path‐dependence scholarship. I elucidate my framework by analyzing the student‐edited, student‐reviewed law review. Despite its anomalous position relative to the dominant peer‐reviewed journal model of other disciplines, and despite sustained criticisms from those who publish in them, the law review remains a bedrock institution of law schools and legal scholarship. I combine qualitative historical analyses of legal scholarship and law schools with quantitative analyses of law‐review structures and field contestation. The analysis covers law review's entire historical trajectory—its emergence, its institutionalization and coherence of a field around it, and its current state as a contested but persistent institution. I argue that self‐reinforcing mechanisms evident in law review's ties to related fields‐legal practice, law schools, the university, and legal periodicals—both enabled its emergence and have buffered it against change.

The promises and pitfalls of path dependence frameworks for analyzing penal change

“…Another version of this type of path dependence has also been articulated within neo-institutional theory from organizational sociology. As several scholars have pointed out (e.g., Kluttz, 2019; Mahoney, 2000; Beyer, 2010), neo-institutional theory is a specific type of path dependence that specifies legitimacy as one mechanism that encourages a particular policy, practice, or formal structure’s lock-in.…”

The Promises and Pitfalls of Path Dependence Frameworks for Analyzing Penal Change

“…Another version of this type of path dependence has also been articulated within neo-institutional theory from organizational sociology. As several scholars have pointed out (e.g., Beyer 2010;Kluttz 2019;Mahoney 2000), neo-institutional theory is a specific type of path dependence that specifies legitimacy as one mechanism that encourages a particular policy, practice, or formal structure's lock-in.…”

Revisiting institutional stability: A systematic review and distillations of dominant modes

“…While informative, we assert that the resulting literature masks important variation in the mechanisms and modes of institutional stability, and complicates our understanding of how and why institutions are maintained over time. Indeed, as Kluttz (2019) argues, "scholars still tend to avoid probing mechanisms by which institutional stability occurs, instead simply assuming that institutions reproduce absent change" (4). We argue that this gap in the literature has particular salience to environmental governance, where the recent pace and magnitude of both political and environmental change necessitates more careful attention to the capacity of existing institutions to meet diverse societal needs (Beunen & Patterson, 2019;Rietig & Laing, 2017;Sjöstedt, 2019).…”

“…It also may limit to serve as a check on change through the continued enactment of existing practices and the continued interaction and relationship-building between individual actors. In this context, the very norms, rules, and practices created or engendered by an institution help to insulate it from transformative change(Kluttz, 2019).…”