General Topics Issue

Our General Topics issue tackles public interest law topics of regional, national, and international importance. Previous General Topics issues have included writing on law and policy in areas including education, the criminal legal system, environment and climate, housing, healthcare, taxation, labor and employment, religion, data and surveillance, access to justice, electoral redistricting, constitutional interpretation, and countless other topics. We welcome submissions on all topics related to public interest law, broadly defined, including interdisciplinary scholarship.

To submit a General Topics manuscript for our review, please navigate to our Scholastica portal. We consider submissions on a rolling basis.

General Assembly Issue

Our General Assembly issue focuses on the Virginia state legislature, with writing on critical developments from the year’s General Assembly session, as well as calls for public policy reform in Virginia. Previous authors have included legislators, legislative advocates, and policy experts.

Submissions are currently closed for our 2024 General Assembly issue. Information about submissions for the 2025 issue will be posted here when available.

Submission Guidelines

Anyone may submit an original piece of writing to be considered for publication in PILR provided they own the copyright for the writing being submitted or are authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the writing. PILR does not accept writing that has been previously published, or is forthcoming, in a journal or book (print or electronic). Please note that “publication” in a working-paper series or on a pre-print service such as SSRN does not constitute prior publication.

PILR requests that each submission be sent as a double-spaced Microsoft Word document with consecutively numbered pages and footnotes. We also encourage inclusion of an an abstract with each submission. There are no formal length requirements or limits for submissions. Submissions should adhere as best as possible to the style presented in the most recent edition of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation. However, we do not expect perfection, and our staff will ensure proper citation style and formatting for all accepted submissions.