''The Urban Lawyer'' is a quarterly

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

law journal A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also provi ...

and the official publication of the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...

's (ABA) Section of State and Local Government Law. Published in cooperation with the

University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law The University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law is the law school of the University of Missouri–Kansas City. It is located on the university's main campus in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Missouri, near the Country Club Plaza. It ...

, ''The Urban Lawyer'' has the largest circulation of any government law journal in the world.Michael M. Berger, ''The Basics of Inverse Condemnation'', , SU010 ALI-CLE 25 (2012).

Overview

''The Urban Lawyer'' publishes articles, essays, letters, case studies, and book reviews relating to urban legal issues.Alexandra Frank
Hidden Gems of the JSTOR Archive: ''The Urban Lawyer'',
Frequent topics include

land use Land use is an umbrella term to describe what happens on a parcel of land. It concerns the benefits derived from using the land, and also the land management actions that humans carry out there. The following categories are used for land use: fo ...

law,

government operations Government spending or expenditure includes all government consumption, investment, and transfer payments. In national income accounting, the acquisition by governments of goods and services for current use, to directly satisfy the individual or ...

environmental law Environmental laws are laws that protect the environment. The term "environmental law" encompasses treaties, statutes, regulations, conventions, and policies designed to protect the natural environment and manage the impact of human activitie ...

public education A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all students without charge. They are funded in whole or in part by taxation and operated by the government of the state. State-f ...

public finance Public finance refers to the monetary resources available to governments and also to the study of finance within government and role of the government in the economy. Within academic settings, public finance is a widely studied subject in man ...

public transportation Public transport (also known as public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) are forms of transport available to the general public. It typically uses a fixed schedule, route and charges a fixed fare. There is no rigid definition of whi ...

ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...

, and

international law International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...

. The journal also hosts symposia on topics relating to urban law and policy. Recent symposia topics have included "Education Reform and Governance," "A 2020 View of Urban Infrastructure," and a "Symposium on Fair Housing Testing." Each year, at least one issue of the journal includes an "Annual Review of the Law," which discusses recent developments in litigation involving urban legal issues. Recent reviews have included, among other subjects, a summary of developments in urban planning law and a summary of developments in education law. The journal also publishes committee reports written by the American Bar Association Section of State and Local Government Law.JoAnne L. Dunec, ''At the Cutting Edge: 2008 Land Use Law from The Urban Lawyer'', 24-FALL 59 (2009). Additionally, the journal publishes "case notes" that summarize recent significant court decisions pertaining to urban law as well as book reviews of recently published books about urban legal issues.

History

In 1968, the American Bar Association's Section of State and Local Government Law decided to replace the Local Government Law Section Newsletter with a full-scale, peer-reviewed law journal to serve as a scholarly forum for "urban legal problem solving." The first volume of the journal was published in 1969, in the wake of what the editors described as "the urban crisis." The founding editors planned for the journal to address "substantive problems common to all local governments such as condemnation, local finance and revenues, special assessments and taxing, planning and zoning."Claud O. Boothman
''Introduction to The Urban Lawyer''
1 v (1969). The Section of State and Local Government Law decided to name the journal "''The Urban Lawyer''" to reflect the fact that "the rapidly increasing shift of our population to urban centers indicates that local governments of the present and future are and will be essentially urban governments."

Impact

With nearly 6,000 hard-copy subscribers and nearly 3,000 online subscribers, the journal is "the largest circulating government law journal in the world." Articles in it have been cited by the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...

, as well as the

Second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...

Third Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system Places * 3rd Street (di ...

, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh,

Ninth In music, a ninth is a compound interval consisting of an octave plus a second. Like the second, the interval of a ninth is classified as a dissonance in common practice tonality. Since a ninth is an octave larger than a second, its ...

, Tenth, and the

Federal Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (in case citations, Fed. Cir. or C.A.F.C.) is one of the 13 United States courts of appeals. It has special appellate jurisdiction over certain categories of cases in the U.S. federal ...

Courts of Appeals. The journal has also been cited by many

state supreme courts In the United States, a state supreme court (known by other names in some states) is the highest court in the state judiciary of a U.S. state. On matters of state law, the judgment of a state supreme court is considered final and binding in b ...

. Articles appear in many legal treatises, including

American Jurisprudence ''American Jurisprudence'' (second edition is cited as Am. Jur. 2d) is an encyclopedia of the United States law, published by West. It was originated by Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, which was subsequently acquired by the Thomson Corporation. ...

American Law Institute The American Law Institute (ALI) is a research and advocacy group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars limited to 3,000 elected members and established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law and i ...

, and

Westlaw Westlaw is an Computer-assisted legal research, online legal research service and proprietary database for lawyers and legal professionals available in over 60 countries. Information resources on Westlaw include more than 40,000 databases of ca ...

practice guides.

Washington and Lee University Washington and Lee University (Washington and Lee or W&L) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Lexington, Virginia, United States. Established in 1749 as Augusta Academy, it is among ...

's Law Journal Rankings place ''The Urban Lawyer'' among the top ten peer-edited

law journals A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also provid ...

most cited by other journals."Law Journals: Submission and Ranking, 2008-2015,"
Washington & Lee University (Accessed: September 25, 2016). Washington and Lee University's rankings also place the journal among the top fifteen peer-edited law journals by combined score. The journal is also the second-highest rated peer-edited law journal that publishes articles relating to

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a Group decision-making, decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to Problem solving, solve or address relevant and problematic social issues, guided by a conceptio ...

politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

, and the law. In 2014, the journal was called a "hidden gem" of the

JSTOR JSTOR ( ; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources founded in 1994. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary source ...

archive.

Abstracting and indexing

''The Urban Lawyer'' is abstracted or indexed in Academic Search (EbscoHost),

HeinOnline HeinOnline (HOL) is a commercial internet database service launched in 2000 by William S. Hein & Co. (WSH Co), a Buffalo, New York publisher specializing in legal materials. The company was founded in Buffalo, New York, in 1961, and is currently ...

LexisNexis LexisNexis is an American data analytics company headquartered in New York, New York. Its products are various databases that are accessed through online portals, including portals for computer-assisted legal research (CALR), newspaper searc ...

,Washington and Lee University Law Library
''Journal Finder: The Urban Lawyer''
and the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

's Current Index to Legal Periodicals. Tables of contents are also available through Infotrieve and

Ingenta Ingenta is a provider of content services for the publishing industry, based in Oxford in the United Kingdom. Customers include both academic and trade publishers as well as information providers. Ingenta plc is listed on the Alternative Invest ...

. The American Bar Association also publishes recent articles from the journal on the Section of State and Local Government Law's website.

''At the Cutting Edge: Land Use Law from The Urban Lawyer''

The American Bar Association's Section of State and Local Government Law also publishes a compendium of section committee reports in book form, titled ''At the Cutting Edge: Land Use Law from The Urban Lawyer.'', Online Catalogue
''The Urban Lawyer: Notes''

''Description: At the Cutting Edge 2012: Land Use Law from The Urban Lawyer''
see also
''At the Cutting Edge 2014: Product Description''
This compendium reprints reports on the subject of land use law that were originally published in ''The Urban Lawyer''. The idea for a compendium originated from a 2008 meeting of leaders of the Section of State and Local Government Law, where leaders discussed ways in which scholarship published in ''The Urban Lawyer'' could reach a wider audience. To accomplish this goal, section leaders decided to publish a collection of committee reports in book form, and the first edition of ''At the Cutting Edge'' was released in 2009. The American Bar Association publishes an updated collection of reports on an annual basis.

Most cited articles

According to Westlaw Legal Research Services, the following three articles have been cited most often:, ''Most Cited Articles in "The Urban Lawyer"'' (last visited July 4, 2014). # Daniel R. Mandelker & A. Dan Tarlock
''Shifting the Presumption of Constitutionality in Land-Use Law''
24 1 (1992) # Daniel R. Mandelker
''Investment Backed Expectations in Taking Law''
27 215 (1995) # John J. Delaney & Duane J. Desiderio
''Who Will Clean Up the "Ripeness Mess"? A Call for Reform So Takings Plaintiffs Can Enter the Federal Courthouse''
31 195 (1999)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Urban Lawyer, The American Bar Association American law journals University of Missouri–Kansas City Academic journals established in 1969 Quarterly journals English-language journals Peer reviewed law journals