 "Photo: Carson Werner/The Daily Texan")
Legal scholarship at UT might be coming out of the closet by spring 2010 if students in the law school can gather enough support for a new journal.
OUTLaw, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender law student alliance, has begun the process of establishing a legal journal to focus solely on issues affecting the gay community. The Texas Journal of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identification and the Law would be the first of its kind at UT and the second student-edited LGBT legal journal in the country.
“Our goal is to give LGBT students in the law school a chance to get involved with the issues,” said OUTLaw president Jason Cordova, the journal’s creator who is spearheading the group’s effort. “We want to merge the fact that these students are gay with the fact that they’re law students.”
Cordova said he intends for the journal to be a neutral forum in which students and professors can publish articles exploring issues such as gay marriage, gay adoption, ballot propositions such as California’s controversial Proposition 8, the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and other legislative contentions.
“We would like it to be a space that deals with the issues in a scholarly way that fosters discussion,” Cordova said. “OUTLaw has a very specific view on things. We don’t want this journal to be a creature of OUTLaw.”
Currently, Tulane University’s “Law & Sexuality” is the only student-edited LGBT law review in the nation. The journal publishes articles by academics, law practitioners and students in areas such as constitutional, employment, family, health, insurance, and military law.
While there are numerous gender and sexuality journals across the country that delve into the highly disputed legal issues facing the LGBT community, Cordova said he thinks these publications are too narrow and do not have a sufficient amount of space to commit to the subject’s many legal disputes.
Cordova said he is also frustrated with the law school’s lack of LGBT courses.
“[UT] is a top ranked law school,” he said, “but it’s managed to have zero LGBT scholarship.”
The law school publishes 12 legal journals with roughly 600 students participating every year. Each journal is a self-sustaining publication with its own unique revenue model. Some journals are published in print while others have been converted to the web.
Because of the University’s diverse range of legal journals spanning nearly every subject, prospective student publishers often find that demonstrating their new journal’s worth is the most difficult part of getting published.
“It’s not something you can sit down over beers at the [Crown & Anchor Pub] and say,‘let’s start a new journal!’” said Kirston Fortune, an assistant dean of communications in the law school.. “They have to demonstrate that they have every question solved.”
Fortune said prospective publishers are required to prove to the UT School of Law Publications Department that their journals are able to create a self-sustaining revenue stream – a single issue in print may cost $3,500 or more to publish – with a consistent reader-base, while evincing the fact that their product can offer original legal scholarship.
“It’s not even so much of an issue of money,” Cordova said of his journal. “The three main obstacles we face are finding a faculty advisor, finding office space [in the law school] and finding initial submissions... Groups and organizations on campus that deal with LGBT issues can expect a call from me soon.”
Despite present uncertainties, OUTLaw expects the journal to be ready for publication by the end of the summer, and plans to have the first volume off the presses by Spring 2010.
“My law career will probably not have anything to do with LGBT activism,” Cordova, who is studying corporate law, said. “I feel like this is our chance to do something for the movement. There’s no better time than now for us to make a difference.”
