Determinants of citations to articles in elite law reviews

This article analyzes the determinants of citations to pieces published fro m 1980 to 1995 in Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and The Yale Law Journal. We also rank articles by number of citations using regressions co ntrolling for time since publication, journal, and subject area. To summari ze a few of our results: citations per year peak at 4 years after publicati on, and an article receives half of its expected total lifetime citations a fter 4.6 years; appearing first in an issue is a significant advantage; int ernational law articles receive fewer citations; jurisprudence articles are cited more often; articles by young, female, or minority authors are more heavily cited. Articles with shorter titles, fewer footnotes per page, and without equations have significantly more citations than other articles. To tal citations generally increase with an article's length, but citations pe r published page peak at 53 pages.