The society
An independent learned society
Standard Law Academic is an independent learned society. It convenes twelve journals and answers to the fields they serve.
Why a society
Legal scholarship depends on a particular kind of attention: a reader willing to take an argument seriously enough to disagree with it in detail. That attention needs a place, and it needs time.
A learned society is one way of holding that place open. It gathers scholars around journals that belong to a field rather than to a market, and it protects the conditions in which editorial judgment can be exercised — slowly, by people who know the field, without an obligation to produce a result.
Standard Law Academic was formed for that purpose. It convenes twelve journals, each with its own field, its own editorial arrangements and its own site, and it holds them to a common standard of scholarly judgment rather than a common house style.
The name
Acta is Latin for the record of what a body has done: the minutes, the transactions, the proceedings of a learned assembly. To name a journal an Acta is to make a claim about what a journal is — a record kept by a community, not a product issued to a market.
Each title joins Acta Juris, the records of law, to the field it serves: Criminalis, Civilis, Administrativi, Processualis, Theoretici, Historici, Mercatorii, Oeconomici, Proprietatis Intellectualis, Gentium, et Technologiae, Socialis.
The name also sets an expectation the society takes seriously: what appears in these journals should be worth keeping.
How the journals are governed
Editorial decisions belong to each journal’s editors. The society does not read decisions before they are made, does not vote on them, and does not ask editors to justify a judgment by its consequences for the society.
The editorial offices of the titles are being established. As appointments are confirmed, each journal announces them on its own site; the society does not announce them in advance.
Details of the society’s own offices will be set out on this page as they are established.
A journal belongs to its field before it belongs to anyone who convenes it.
Independence
The society is independent, and its journals are not a means of extracting revenue from authors or readers.
Independence is also a discipline: no funder, sponsor or proprietor has a view that counts in an editorial decision, and the society’s own preferences do not count either.
The journals are open access, and no article processing charge is levied at present. Access is not used as a lever, and it is not sold.
What is asked of the journals
Each journal is asked to carry work that will still be worth arguing with: doctrine that knows its sources, theory that risks a claim, history that respects the archive, and comparison that does not flatten what it compares.
The society does not ask for a house style, a preferred method or a line of argument. It asks for work that a field would recognise as its own.