Yale Law Journal Editor-in-Chief | Interview

I recently interviewed Ben Taibleson, current Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal (on Wikipedia), via email. Our discussion follows.

1. How did you become Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal?

The Yale Law Journal Editor-in-Chief is elected by the full membership of the Journal. The EIC candidates first submitted written materials outlining why we wanted the position and how we felt about a set of Journal policy questions. We then gave a short speech and answered questions at a pre-election forum. Each Journal member then ranked the EIC candidates, and the rankings were used to determine the winner.


2. Would you please explain how a typical volume of the journal is put together?

The Yale Law Journal is composed of lengthy faculty-written articles, shorter, often solicited, faculty-written work and very high-quality Yale Law student pieces. The Journal receives thousands of submissions for each volume, so a great deal of work goes into selecting our content. We also put a lot of time and energy into our multi-stage editing process. Each volume's scholarship is then divided into a number of issues and distributed electronically and in print.


3. How do you manage to balance your YLJ responsibilities and all your reading?

I am heavily involved in just about everything the Journal does, so my YLJ responsibilities are proving to be very substantial. My predecessor has given me a ton of great advice on how to strike a healthy balance, though, and my colleagues are so talented and hardworking that my job won't be as tough as it otherwise might . The quantity of work borders on the absurd, but it's a lot of fun, and I am incredibly lucky to have the privilege to do it. I doubt that many people with real jobs, kids, etc. would shed too many tears for my entirely voluntary workload.


Ben Taibleson was born outside Chicago and grew up in Milwaukee. He studied Economics and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and spent a year traveling and working in Africa and Asia before starting at Yale Law. His father is an attorney and his mother a high school dance teacher in Milwaukee; he has two exceedingly talented younger brothers whom he loves very much.