The innovative online journal Jotwell (The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)) has been transforming legal academia since 2008 and specializes in short reviews of the latest and most pathbreaking legal scholarship. The journal, started, housed, and supported by the University of Miami School of Law, is organized by more than 20 legal specialties, including contracts, constitutional law, international and comparative law, and corporate law.
Over its 17-year history, Jotwell has highlighted almost 3,500 articles. Nowhere is its impact more visible than in the field of corporate law, a vital resource for scholars seeking to identify, celebrate, and discuss the most significant new writing in corporate law.
"This approach allows corporate law scholars to quickly find and engage with important new work in their field, while also discovering interdisciplinary connections—to antitrust law and political economy, for example—that shape contemporary debates," said founding section editor Caroline Bradley, a scholar of financial and corporate law at the University of Miami School of Law and associate dean for international and graduate programs.
With over 350 law journals in North America, the proliferation of publications has diluted the gatekeeping function once performed by a handful of elite journals. Jotwell's sections address this challenge by providing short, positive reviews—or "jots"—written by leading law professors who select works they wish to highlight for a broad audience. These reviews focus on the original contributions and value of recent scholarship, making complex topics such as shareholder activism, corporate governance, and corporate purpose accessible to a broad audience.
“Jotwell's key innovation is requiring people to identify articles they think are important and deserve wider circulation rather than ordinary legal scholarship that tends to focus on identifying flaws,” said Jotwell's founder and editor-in-chief A. Michael Froomkin, the Laurie Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Miami.
The corporate law section, along with all the other sections, operates with independent editorial control, led by section editors who select a team of contributing editors who are leaders in their field. Each editor commits to writing at least one "jot" per year, ensuring a steady stream of content that informs the legal community about the latest developments.
“I’m always impressed with the range of articles (and sometimes books) that get selected by the contributing editors, and I learn a lot from each jot,” said George S. Georgiev, a corporate law professor at the University of Miami School of Law, who serves as co-editor of Jotwell’s corporate law section alongside Bradley. “Looking at Jotwell’s selections over the years, the journal has been a great barometer of where corporate law scholarship is coming from and where it is headed next.”
The section’s most recent corporate law jot is a review of Zohar Goshen, Assaf Hamdani & Dorothy Lund’s new paper, Fixing MFW: Fairness and Vision in Controller Self-Dealing (forthcoming in the Harvard Business Law Review) by the University of Seattle’s Chuck O’Kelley. Other recent jots were authored by Temple University’s Tom C.W. Lin, the University of Colorado’s Ann Lipton, the University of Tennessee’s Joan Heminway, and the University of Minnesota’s Brett McDonnel.
Recognition and influence
Jotwell has been recognized for its value to the legal community. In 2014, the American Bar Association Journal listed Jotwell among its prestigious "Blawg 100," and also listed it in its “Web 100” in 2018 for one of the best legal blogs highlighting Jotwell’s role in celebrating quality writing and fostering positive discussion.
Read more about Miami Law’s Business Law area of study.
