It’s publish or perish in the law professor business, and most of that publishing occurs in law review articles.
Law professors strive mightily to make their law review articles stand out by coming up with clever titles for them. The trick is coming up with a title that is attention-getting, but also descriptive. This, of course, requires use of the ubiquitous colon, which appears in the vast majority of law review titles. Some law professors look down on colons in law review titles (yes, this is part of the important stuff we actually spend time thinking and talking about) and eschew them, but the result is often a title that doesn’t give a clue what the article is about.
Here’s a top candidate for the best law review article title:
Erik S. Jaffe, “She’s Got Bette Davis[‘s] Eyes”: Assessing the Nonconsensual Removal of Cadaver Organs Under the Takings and Due Process Clauses, 90 Columbia Law Review 528 (1990).
Oldsters will recall that “She’s Got Bette Davis Eyes” was a smash hit for Kim Carnes in 1981. Originally written by Jackie DeShannon and Donna Weiss in 1974, Carnes took the song to number one on the Billboard charts where it held the top spot for nine weeks.
— Erik S. Jaffe, “She’s Got Bette Davis[‘s] Eyes”: Assessing the Nonconsensual Removal of Cadaver Organs Under the Takings and Due Process Clauses, 90 Columbia Law Review 528 (1990)
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