Persona Non Grata: The Marginalization of Legal Scholarship in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals

Abstract

Recently, concern has been voiced within the academy regarding the marginalization of legal scholarship within the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) discipline. Although conventional wisdom and anecdotal evidence indicate that it is difficult to get legal scholarship published in CCJ journals, there is a dearth of empirical evidence on the representation of legal scholarship in CCJ journals. The present study assesses the representation of legal scholarship in 20 CCJ journals from 2005 through 2015, examining both trends over time and variation across journals. Findings indicate legal scholarship comprises a very small portion of articles published, there has been a steep decline in the number of legal articles published in recent years and the average number of legal articles per year is very low for nearly all of the journals in the sample. The implications of the marginalization of legal scholarship within the CCJ discipline are discussed.

The Invisible Scholar: Authors of Legal Scholarship in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals

“…Building on earlier work by Rowe et al (2016), which examined the representation of legal articles and courts and sentencing articles in CCJ journals, the present study uses a sample Violence and Juvenile Justice (YVJJ). Rowe et al (2016) selected these journals based on: (1) the first 13 journals listed being ranked in the top 10 by Sorensen, Snell, and Rodriguez's (2006) prestige ranking study, in which CCJ journals were ranked based on perceived prestige by members of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS), and Sorensen's (2009) impact ranking study, in which CCJ journals were ranked based on citation analysis; and (2) the following 7 journals being either affiliated with ASC or ACJS or being prominent journals focusing on important criminal justice topics, such as corrections and juvenile justice.…”

“…Despite the importance of law in delineating what conduct constitutes crime (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2016Nolasco, del Carmen, Steinmetz, Vaughn, & Spaic, 2015) and in setting limits on the criminal justice system's response to crime (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2015b, law has been marginalized within the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) discipline both with regard to the place of law-related courses in CCJ education (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2015b(Hemmens, , 2016Nolasco et al, 2015) and the representation of legal scholarship in CCJ journals (Hemmens, 2016;Rowe, McCann, & Hemmens, 2016). Recently, a growing number of CCJ scholars have made a persuasive argument that it is time to remedy the marginalization of legal scholarship within the CCJ discipline (Hemmens, 2015a(Hemmens, , 2015b(Hemmens, , 2016Nolasco et al, 2015;Nolasco, Vaughn, & del Carmen, 2010;Rowe et al, 2016). In light of this important discussion regarding the place of legal scholarship within the CCJ discipline, now is an opportune time to garner empirical evidence concerning the authorship of legal scholarship within the CCJ discipline, shedding light on the extent of collaboration among CCJ legal scholars and identifying CCJ legal scholars who have remained largely invisible to date due to their focus on a subfield which has been marginalized within the CCJ discipline.…”

“…Finally, this study will identify the most prolific authors of legal articles and the most prolific authors of courts and sentencing articles and compare the number of articles published by the authors in these two groups. The comparison between authorship of legal articles and authorship of courts and sentencing articles provides a useful point of comparison because courts and sentencing is a related, but distinct, area of CCJ scholarship which is better represented in CCJ journals than legal scholarship is, yet is still underrepresented, considering that courts are one of the three main components of the criminal justice system (Rowe et al, 2016). Also, identifying the most prolific authors of courts and sentencing articles is responsive to Rice, Terry, Miller, and Ackerman's (2007) call for research identifying the most productive scholars within the subdisciplines.…”

“…However, these ranking studies are unlikely to highlight those CCJ scholars who are the greatest producers of legal scholarship published in CCJ journals for several reasons. First, they often use samples which are not ideal for studying who is contributing the most to the relatively small body of legal scholarship published in CCJ journals due to: (1) the tendency to focus on top-ranked CCJ journals (see e.g., Cohn & Farrington, 2007;Cohn et al, 2017;Jennings et al, 2008;Orrick & Weir, 2011;Steiner & Schwartz, 2006;Weir & Orrick, 2013), the vast majority of which feature little legal scholarship (Rowe et al, 2016); (2) exclusion of JCLC (see e.g., Cohn & Farrington, 2007, which publishes far more legal scholarship than other CCJ journals (Rowe et al, 2016) or the portion of JCLC which features legal scholarship; and (3) the use of article inclusion criteria which exclude doctrinal legal scholarship (see e.g., Steiner & Schwartz, 2006).…”

“…Second, due to the marginalization of legal scholarship within the CCJ discipline, CCJ scholars who focus primarily on legal scholarship are unlikely to appear in general rankings of top CCJ scholars. Because legal scholarship constitutes a very small percentage of articles published in CCJ journals (Rowe et al, 2016), legal scholars are not likely to appear in lists of the most prolific publishers based on counts of articles published in CCJ journals. Likewise, legal scholars' work is unlikely to be cited in CCJ journals when legal scholarship rarely appears in CCJ journals, given that CCJ scholars tend to read and cite articles published in CCJ journals and that articles on non-legal topics would have relatively little need to cite legal articles.…”