About the Review

The IY-LAW Review publishes legal writing by secondary-school students from any country, edited to the standards of a law review.

Every piece is read anonymously by two reviewers, one of them with legal training, and checked for legal accuracy before publication. The Review is published by IY-LAW. It is free to read, and free to publish in.

What we publish

Writing on the law of any country, international law, comparative law, legal history, and the relationship between law and society. Three formats; word counts exclude footnotes.

Who may submit

Students in secondary education anywhere in the world, normally aged 13 to 19. One submission per person per issue, with up to three co-authors. You need not belong to an IY-LAW chapter.

How to submit

Email contact@iylaw.org with the subject line Review Issue 2: [type of piece], attaching two files.

I   Your manuscript, in Word or PDF, with no name or school anywhere in it, including the file name and file properties. Name it ReviewIssue2-[Type]-[ShortTitle].

II   The completed cover sheet, as a separate file. The fields are listed at the foot of this page.

Footnotes follow OSCOLA, the Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, which is free to download. 12-point font, 1.5 spacing.

How we review

I   Desk check. Within seven days we confirm the piece is in scope, within length, anonymised and original.

II   Two anonymous readers. A student editor and a volunteer reviewer with legal training, neither of whom knows who you are.

III   Criteria. Understanding of the law; quality of argument and use of evidence; originality; structure and clarity.

IV   Decision. Accept, accept with revisions, revise and resubmit, or decline. Every author receives written reasons.

V   Accuracy check. Every accepted piece is checked for legal accuracy before it is published.

Editorial board

The Review is edited by students: an Editor-in-Chief, a Managing Editor and Articles Editors, supported by volunteer reviewers with legal training. Appointments for 2026 to 2027 are under way, and the board will be listed here.

To register interest, write to contact@iylaw.org with the subject line Review editorial board.

Policies

Open access. Everything we publish is free to read and download, immediately, with no registration.

Licence. Published pieces carry a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 licence: anyone may share them with credit, and no one may sell them.

Copyright. Authors keep copyright. They grant IY-LAW a non-exclusive licence to publish, archive and assign identifiers to their work, and may republish it anywhere with a note that it first appeared here.

Fees. The Review charges no submission, processing or publication fees.

AI tools. Authors may use AI tools for research and proofreading if they declare it on the cover sheet. Text written by an AI tool may not be submitted. AI tools cannot be authors or sources.

Originality. Work must be the author’s own and unpublished. Every submission is checked for plagiarism.

Corrections. Errors are corrected with a dated note. Serious misconduct leads to retraction with a public notice.

Independence. Views in the Review belong to their authors. The Review takes no position on any question of law or policy.

Consent and safeguarding. Authors under 18 need a parent or guardian’s written consent to permanent publication. Any author may publish under first name and initial. We never print contact details, dates of birth or photographs without separate consent, and reviewers never contact authors directly.

Issues

Issue 2

December 2026  ·  Forthcoming

Issue 1

June 2025  ·  Published under the Review’s earlier guidelines

Cover sheet

Send these details as a separate document with your manuscript. Nothing on the cover sheet is shown to reviewers.