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by DannyBee 152 days ago
I think you may be confused. This is not a research paper, it's an op-ed in a law journal.

SSRN is where most draft law review/journal articles are published, which may be the source of confusion.

For most other fields, it is a source of draft/published science papers, but for law, it's pretty much any kind of article that is going to show up in a law review/journal.
2 comments
contrarian1234 150 days ago
Ah okay, thanks for explaining it! Just based on the name, journal and metadata it seemed like a research paper.. and I was honestly a bit surprised. But I obviously don't publish law research :))

From what you're saying it seems that for an insider this is clear. I guess that makes more sense then

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chilmers 151 days ago
It is literally called “ Boston Univ. School of Law Research Paper No. 5870623”
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DannyBee 151 days ago
It's also an submission to UC hastings law journal, as it also says right before that?

The automated tagging with a BUSL ID is just how BUSL's system for papers of any sort works.

For reference: I did my first year of law school at BUSL so i'm very familiar with how it all works there :)

This is also very common elsewhere - everything that IBM used to release got tagged with a technical report number too, for example, whether it was or not.

In any case - it is clearly a piece meant to be persuasive writing, rather than deep research.

Law journals contain a mix of essentially op-eds and deeper research papers or factual expositories/kind of thing. They are mostly not like scientific journals. Though some exist that are basically all op-ed or zero op-ed.

Compare something like:

https://repository.uclawsf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2...

Which is a piece in UC law journal meant as an informative piece cataloguing how california courts adjudicate false advertising law. It does not really take a position.

with

https://repository.uclawsf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3...

Which is a piece in UC hastings law journal meant as, essentially an op ed, arguing that dog sniff tests are bullshit.

I picked both of these at random from stuff in UC hastings law journal that had been cited by the Supreme Court of California. There are things that are even more factual/take zero positions, and things that are even more persuasive writing/less researchy, than either of these, but they are reasonable representatives, i think

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