About Agora What was formerly the Stanford Journal of Legal Studies is now the Stanford Agora: an Online Journal of Legal Perspectives. This change in name reflects not only an evolutionary change to a new format, but also a re-commitment to pushing the boundaries of legal education. The Stanford Journal of Legal Studies, which only published one issue (available in our archives), was started by a group of law students at Stanford Law School in the spring semester of 1999. Key to these early efforts were Sahand Shaibani and Laura Engelhardt, who originally conceived of the journal and filed its initial business plan, Derek Roberti, who programmed and formatted the original webpages, and Carl Flink and Ryan Fortson, who served in invaluable managerial and strategic planning roles. The Stanford Journal of Legal Studies sought to provide a place for meaningful interdisciplinary inquiries into law and its impact on society at large. This focus still remains; it is why we call ourselves a journal of "legal perspectives." The Stanford Agora hopes to appeal to and be read not only by legal students and scholars but also by those in non-legal academic disciplines and indeed by the general public as a whole. We hope to move away from the focus that many law articles have on proving a narrow legal point in the hopes of someday being cited in a court opinion or in yet another law article. The Stanford Agora publishes with the purpose of being intellectually stimulating by causing its readers to think about the broader implications of law. At the same time, we intend to maintain the academic rigorousness of an academic law journal. In short, we want to be "readable with teeth."

Despite what we continue to believe was a very strong first effort, the executive board felt that more could be done to take advantage of our exciting new format. In a meeting we had in December of 1999 upon publication of the Stanford Journal of Legal Studies, Dean Kathleen Sullivan challenged us to push the boundaries of legal scholarship and avoid being yet another "greybeard" law journal. Stanford Law School is in the heart of Silicon Valley and should have a law journal that embodies this innovative spirit. Dean Sullivan encouraged us to rethink what it meant to be an Internet-based academic publication, a journal for the 21st century. She suggested that if we stayed with our previous format we would could become a solid niche journal, but one that would likely be lost in the plethora of law journals already in existence. If instead we explored the radical new path on which we are about to embark, we could really make a splash and become a meaningful contribution to legal discourse. At the Stanford Agora, we firmly believe that creating the law journal of the future involves two central pillars that, while they must necessarily supplement and support each other, require separate attention: content and presentation.

An "agora" in ancient Greece was a marketplace or public square. People would come from all over to share their wares in the agora. We hope to reproduce the spirit of that ancient gathering place for the world of contemporary legal thought. The Stanford Agora aims to make the law accessible for all those who would come into our marketplace of ideas while keeping the content of our articles interesting enough to merit their perusal. We intend over the next few years to create a journal that reinvigorates the idea of law as one of the pillars of liberal arts thinking and human problem solving, resisting the increasing Balkanization of the legal establishment into highly specialized and technical areas of expertise. This will be accomplished by creating an ongoing and active interdisciplinary dialogue between legal scholars and other academic disciplines on the law and its effects on society. The Stanford Agora plans on making its content accessible to the general public by publishing articles shorter than are found in traditional law journals and reviews. Recognizing that too many short articles risk creating a journal without cohesion, we will employ a symposium format to focus on an issue of importance both inside and outside of law. Each symposium will consist of about three core articles, with at least one of them coming from a perspective outside of law. The core essay would serve as the focal point for a number of shorter supplemental essays from a variety of academic disciplines. This format will allow for a number of very readable articles to be presented from a wide range of perspectives. Increasing the number of small articles and essays we publish will allow the Stanford Agora at least partially to shed the conservative submissions process that law journals publishing only a couple of articles each issue must employ. This ability to experiment and explore helps foster a broad interdisciplinary scope in our content. We plan on inviting any and all into the Stanford Agora.

The interdisciplinary nature of our content will be further enhanced and expanded by our existence as an Internet publication and the style of presentation that enables. Indeed, the Stanford Agora believes that the Internet will create a whole new way of thinking. Before Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable type in the 1400s, all knowledge was primarily oral, in the form of stories or songs, or visual, through depictions of religious imagery in places of worship. With the advent of the printing press, knowledge became text. This resulted in a world where truth was, quite literally, black and white. Why? Because you could only have one book or manuscript in front of you at the same time. The Internet circumvents this problem by allowing text, sound, and visual imagery to confront the reader/listener/viewer all at the same time. Indeed, in this way the Internet represents a combination of sensory and intellectual forms of knowledge to synthesize an altogether new form of knowledge. The Stanford Agora plans on taking full advantage of the opportunities this exciting new media opens up. The possibilities are virtually limitless. Along with rigorous but enjoyable content, we will present artwork, sound clips of readings and dramatic enactments, video clips from plays, interviews, pictures of sculptures, poetry, photo essays, passages from famous literature, images of other cultures, songs and other musical recordings, video excerpts from movies and television programs, selections from famous speeches and oral arguments (both text and sound), and many other possibilities. It is our hope and expectation that this multimedia content will cause those who come to our webpage to think about the law in a whole new way and draw connections between different elements of human society that they might not otherwise have been able to imagine. Thus, the use of our multimedia capacities will allow the Stanford Agora to encourage, solicit, and foster new methods of examining law and society that go beyond the traditional rational analytical approaches, such as by drawing upon oral traditions of tribal justice systems, storytelling, nonlinear examinations, and artistic critiques that offer unique and potentially illuminating perspectives on their subject matter. Being an Internet publication will foster the exploration of these different approaches to understanding in ways not possible using the traditional printed format alone.

By pushing our content and presentation to their limits, the Stanford Agora will truly become a journal of legal perspectives, with an emphasis on the word "perspectives." This new journal re-envisions, revolutionizes, and revitalizes the function, relevance, look, and appeal of the law school publication/journal. The Stanford Agora seeks to bridge the gap between the study of law and other academic disciplines by focusing on a broad range of interdisciplinary approaches to law. Join us on this exciting journey!