Comedy Is Legal Again: After Two-Year Long Public Campaign, California Lawn Review Returns
After a two-year hiatus, the preeminent student-run publication at UC Berkeley, School of Law, has returned. The famed journal has been cited by the Los Angeles Times, Instagram, The U.S. Supreme Court, and Grok.
The campaign to bring back CLR included a long process of public organizing, protesting, and one armed robbery. A staunch supporter of the campaign to bring back CLR, a pro‐ fessor at the law school/dude who runs bar trivia on Telegraph on Wednesday nights who asked to not be named (rhymes with “you”), stated that he “can’t believe this school was able to get by for even two years without a single student-run journal publishing high-end articles.” “It is unfathomable how anyone could continue operating without thousands of hours being expended by hundreds of students to put out a journal read by fourteen people and that was cited by SCOTUS once like half a decade ago- Oh, the California Lawn Review? Yeah, that one I’ve actually read. Glad that’s back… Can you name this song?”
One supporter of the journal said, “I think it is important to have at least one journal that actually reports about things relvant to student life. I hope it isn’t actually about botany and lawn stuff? Is it? Whatever.” An alumnus was asked regarding the return of CLR: “They brought Lawn Review back? Really? But didn’t they post all that stuff about Dean Chem-[omitted for brevity].”
One 3L recalled, “I remember how great it was to have a journal that would report the things nobody else had the cojones to report. Like that time Lawn Review wrote about how the building is confusing and students get lost. That was really original and funny and provided biting satirical insight. lmao.”
When asked why he shut down the journal two years back, El Deano Chem responded, “whenever somebody asks me why I have hope I say it is because of my students….” The answer went on for a while but did not quite respond to the prompt. Rumors had been circulating that the journal was shut down by the administration due to readership being too high. “We can’t have a journal so widely read by students, as it may cut into their free time in which they are meant to be working pro bono for other journals at the school or interning at the Law and Justice Center for no credit and no pay.”
The campaign included sit-ins where student-protestors chanted “Pee Pee! Poo Poo! Bring back the Lawn Review!” Chants were never considered the campaigners’ strong suit. Although the administration maintained that most students were nonviolent, the students themselves admitted to being quite violent. “I beat the shit out of a lot of people” remarked a recent American Jurisprudence recipient (small mod so doesn’t really count), who claims to have acted in the name of “the movement.”
The campaign to bring back the journal hit its climax when protesters changed the quotes on the front of the building from those most memorable and eloquent quotes by Justices Cardozo and Holmes with quotes by Oscar Wilde and Celine Dion. (For those who don’t remember: the one on the left is about Cardozo tripping balls in Tilden Park and then finding a fire trail back to Ike’s, while the Holmes one is about some mixed-race thotiana princess—really, go read it, we dare you). The connection between Wilde and Dion to bringing back Lawn Review remains unclear.
The lengthy campaign brought together disparate groups that were historically at odds. These included the Zeb and anti-Zeb peoples, the Plaintiff Law Association students and those who actually have jobs lined up, as well as FedSoc students and the Crips.
We don’t know how the previous editorial board of the Lawn Review disappeared, but the journal seems to be back... For now...
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