4/03/09--Each March, law reviews across the country hold elections to select new editorial boards. Heading these editorial boards are the editors in chief who bear ultimate responsibility for their journals' content and quality. The students who staff the scholarly publications produced at Boston College Law School have chosen five editors in chief possessed of impressive backgrounds, some of whom have taken unexpected routes to their current positions.

"These editors in chief have an important role not limited merely to encouraging an intellectual exchange in the legal academy," said John Gordon '88, Manager of Law Review Publications. "They are also stewards of the scholarship that goes out under the imprimatur of Boston College Law School. We are extremely fortunate to have students who are willing to commit their time and energy to that process."

Meet the Editors

Before coming to law school, Caitlin Mulligan, who will top the masthead of the Boston College Law Review, worked as a legislative aide in the D.C. office of her home state's senator, Jack Reed of Rhode Island. She sees publishing legal scholarship that advances the academic discourse as an extension of the work she did on the Hill, where legislative issues relating to trade, economic growth, the budget, and banking filled her portfolio of responsibilities.

Whereas Caitlin's time among the nation’s lawmakers is a conventional route to journal work, Doug Humphrey, who is the new editor in chief of the Environmental Affairs Law Review, took a more unusual path. While working as a paralegal in D.C., Doug volunteered about 30 hours per week at a grassroots foreign aid organization. That led to on-the-ground work in rural western Kenya, implementing a range of programs providing assistance to the poor and elderly. In 2004, Doug entered Emory University to get a masters degree in theology--the start of a period of personal reflection on ethics and social responsibility that, he says, motivated him to pursue a career in the law.

Rebecca Hanft, the incoming editor in chief of the Uniform Commercial Code Reporter-Digest, dreamed of becoming a writer. After she received a masters degree from the University of Southern California in writing, Rebecca taught writing and critical reasoning to U.S.C. freshmen. One course, "Law, Politics, and Public Policy," compelled her to research legal issues, which reignited her interest in becoming a lawyer. Her work on the Digest will combine her enthusiasm for writing with the specialized knowledge the Uniform Commercial Code requires.

Ben Wastler, too, was a teacher before coming to law school. As a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, he taught middle school in Camden, New Jersey. Grading countless student papers and helping students clarify their work provided Ben with the incentive to run for editor in chief of the International & Comparative Law Review, where he will spearhead the journal's publication of fourteen essays derived from a symposium on the jurisprudence of marriage held at the law school in March.

Leslie Dougherty's work for a judge hearing felony cases in Detroit sparked her interest in the law, but it was a summer spent in Avignon, where she met and mingled with people from around the world, that helped to clarify her interest in social justice issues. As a staff writer for the Third World Law Journal, Leslie wrote about the Irish Travellers, a nomadic ethnic group in Great Britain marginalized by English law. The encouragement she received from her editors throughout the processes moved her to run for editor in chief this year.