Harvard recently announced that it has launched an online sports and entertainment law journal. The students received approval from the school in August and hope to have the inaugural issued published in the spring of 2010. The journal’s founders hope to have a printed version launched within the next few years that will be published on a bi-annual basis. The journal’s intent is to “provide the academic community, the sports and entertainment industries, and the broader legal profession with scholarly analysis and research related to the legal aspects of the sports and entertainment communities.”
The journal was founded by Ashwin Krishnan, Josh Podoll and Ryan Gauthier. They started the journal due to the lack of such publication at Harvard and a growing interest on the campus. They believe that by starting the journal, they can be leaders in the field of sports and entertainment law. The Journal’s faculty supervisor is Peter Carfagna, former general counsel to International Management Group (IMG). Carfagna believes that the sports and entertainment field needed “serious scholarship from a place like Harvard” because “courts will listen to what publications like this have to say about where they should go next in the areas that intersect sports law.”
Sports and entertainment law encompass other areas of law such as intellectual property, publicity rights, antitrust law, labor law, and contract law. There are many law schools that have sports and entertainment law journals or similar publications. Harvard’s journal will be the first online journal that I am aware of. It will be interesting to see how quickly Harvard’s journal rises up the ranks of sports and entertainment law journals. I believe Harvard’s journal will be successful but may take some time to pass top journals like Villanova and Marquette.
The journal will be accepting articles, essays, book reviews, notes, and comments regarding legal and/or public policy issues related to sports and entertainment law. For more information on submissions, visit http://harvardjsel.com/submissions/
Darren Heitner wrote a similar piece yesterday discussing the new Journal over at SportsAgentBlog.com.