New Rambler Review of Books Launches: Online Literary Journal Supported by Law School, Co-Edited by Eric Posner
They were inspired by essayist Samuel Johnson’s 18th century Rambler, a journal of ideas discussing morality, literature, politics, and religion. Now, the editors launching The New Rambler Review , a free online book review, aim to spark lively 21st century discussion of ideas among academics, journalists, and commentators.
“Our mission is to make available to the public serious debate and analysis of valuable academic work,” said co-founder and co-editor Eric Posner, Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair. That work and the reviews, added Posner, often are confined to academic journals behind paywalls. “Academics do a lot of reviewing, but the work tends to be buried in journals and not available to the public,” said Posner, a regular contributor to Slate who also blogs at ericposner.com.
The New Rambler Review, like Johnson’s predecessor, will be “non-ideological” and pitched at readers who are “intellectually curious,” Posner said. The New Rambler will also draw on the literary traditions and high standards of The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and The London Review of Books, and feature topics ranging from arts and classics to economics, law, political science and religion. The new review has been under discussion for several years, but recent editorial changes at The New Republic, including in its famed book section, meant that “the need for what we were doing became more deeply felt,” Posner said.
Posner is joined as co-editor by Adrian Vermeule, professor at the Harvard Law School and a former professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and Blakey Vermeule, professor of English at Stanford.
The New Rambler has launched with support from the University of Chicago Law School and investment manager and philanthropist Gifford Combs. Law students in the Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab will draft documents to apply for charitable 501c-3 status, making possible donations to pay reviewers of The New Rambler.
“Eric is a colleague who produces great scholarship and is keenly interested in generating intellectually challenging public debate, as we see in his stimulating work for Slate and on his blog,” said Michael H. Schill, Dean of the Law School and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law. “The launch of The New Rambler Review is an exciting new venture that will broaden and deepen discussion of important ideas. I am thrilled to be an early subscriber.”
The review will publish two pieces a week initially, aiming to at least double the number of weekly posts. Posner and his co-editors will be reaching out to their networks to encourage reviews of contemporary books and those published earlier, but overlooked. Early issues of The New Rambler have featured an eclectic range of discussions and perspectives. Aziz Huq, Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, addressed the turmoil in the Middle East in his review of TEMPTATIONS OF POWER: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, by Shadi Hamid, and THE RISE OF THE ISLAMIC STATE: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. Dan Herzog, who teaches law and political theory at the University of Michigan, addressed the debate on capital punishment in his review of JUST MERCY: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson. Asking “where do norms come from?” Cass R. Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, recently reviewed THE EMERGENCE OF NORMS, by Edna Ullmann-Margalit.
“For all of us who were deeply saddened by the departure of (Literary Editor) Leon Wieseltier from The New Republic, where so many first-rate and thoughtful reviews have been published over the years, it is exciting and heartening to be part of The New Rambler,” said Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the Law School. Nussbaum, a reviewer of ON OPERA and ESSAYS AND REVIEWS 1959-2002, by Bernard Williams, added: “We should all be deeply grateful to Eric and the other editors for their willingness to invest so much time and effort for the sake of keeping the world of ideas going.”