Faculty shuttered JILIR despite student protests after the Munk School pulled support
Last year, the Faculty of Law officially discontinued the Journal of International Law and International Relations (JILIR). A joint publication with the Munk School of Global Affairs (now the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy), the journal published 13 volumes in its 14-year run featuring articles from professors, policy-makers, and students about the intersection between the two fields of research.
The decision to cancel, according to Assistant Dean Sara Faherty, was the result of a year-long discussion within the law school after the Munk School decided to end their partnership in 2016. While the faculty deliberated for another year, they eventually concluded that the Munk School had pulled their support for good reasons. Due to a growing volume of research and interest in what was once a niche area, the leadership at both schools reached the decision that there was no longer a need for a space dedicated to debate on topics that were being subsumed into the fields of law and the rapidly expanding field of global affairs. “The facts made it inevitable to a certain extent,” Faherty said. “Our little journal had a good reputation but people would rather get published in the big journals of both fields that were now accepting cross-field work,” she said.
Anne-Rachelle Boulanger (4L JD/MGA) was one of three Editors-in-Chief in the journal’s final year. She and the other editorial staff learned of the faculty’s decision to end their publication in October 2017 but did not receive an explanation until February 2018, with the reasons above being elaborated upon in a memo that was written with the Munk School. The journal staff spent their final months closing out the journal, publishing one last issue and turning away submissions and students who continued to express interest in being involved. “We tried to fight for it,” Boulanger said. She continued, “We met with Sara Faherty and the Dean, but they were just unwilling.”
In 2017, JILIR held the fourth-best overall score among Canadian law journals according to annual rankings produced by Washington and Lee University.
Beyond the academic reasons, Boulanger thinks that practical concerns led to the journal’s end. While the other student-run journals were subject to much more supervision and faculty oversight, JILIR was more collegial and set their own deadlines. After the Munk School dropped out, there was no longer a faculty sponsor and the staff were unable to find someone from the Faculty of Law who had enough time and interest to commit to the journal. Although Boulanger agrees that the field has grown, she does not think this was a good reason to end the journal. She said, “There’s still so much interest in that area and students who wanted to work on it. I’m sure the things we could have taken will end up somewhere else, but there’s no downside to having a space devoted to just that.”
Although its website is now defunct, there is no mention of the cancellation on the Faculty’s homepage, which lists JILIR as one of four student-run journals at the law school. Law reviews have long been a popular and reputable extracurricular for aspiring lawyers while in school. The credentials look extremely good on resumes, at least according to the law school grapevine, and the work also gives students the chance to review, edit, and contemplate contemporary legal ideas. JILIR’s discontinuation means there are 40 to 50 fewer spots for students to contribute to an academic journal. With tuition a contentious matter, it is unlikely that the law school will start another journal, which costs anywhere between $5,000 to $15,000. While the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review (UTFLR) has a group dedicated to international law, it does not produce the same volume of work that a journal dedicated to the subject did.
In 2017, JILIR held the fourth-best overall score among Canadian law journals according to annual rankings produced by Washington and Lee University. It scored 2.1 out of 100 and was cited 52 times, behind the Osgoode, McGill, and University of Toronto Law Journals, which scored 2.3, 3.5 and 4.7 respectively. (The Harvard Law Review, for comparison, routinely scores 100). By contrast, in 2017, UTFLR scored just 0.5 out of 100, ranking 22nd in Canada. When Boulanger was discussing the end of JILIR with the Faculty, she felt that the focus was on improving the review process, the quality of the faculty’s journals, and UTFLR, despite that journal being less academically impactful. “I got the sense that the school was valuing the final product over the student experience,” she said. As a JD/MGA student, Boulanger also saw JILIR as a rare opportunity for collaboration between the two schools. From the Munk side, it gave global affairs students interested in law a chance to interact with the subject matter. “And I think we could have created a really good final product,” she concluded, “and they didn’t give us a chance to try.”
Correction: The print issue mistakenly stated that JILIR’s staff learned of the Faculty’s decision to end the journal in February 2018. They learned of the decision in October 2017 but were not provided with reasons until February 2018.
