Students launch undergraduate law journal

It was spring 2024. Hailee Pitschke ’25 — a politics major and anthropology minor from the South Bay Area of Los Angeles — was in the throes of her coursework for a class on the Supreme Court, taught by Mount Holyoke College President Danielle R. Holley. With the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and other Supreme Court cases spotlighted in the media, conversations about the relationship between the law and people’s day-to-day realities had become fairly common on campus. And then, Pitschke’s friend Katherine Sloop ’26, from Houston, made a suggestion: What if Mount Holyoke published an undergraduate law journal?

The idea immediately grabbed Pitschke. She and Sloop both had a serious interest in legal scholarship and writing about the law. Other undergraduate colleges, including nearby Five College Consortium member Amherst College, already had an undergraduate law journal. And so, the idea started bubbling in their minds. President Holley’s note on Pitschke’s final project for her Supreme Court class, analyzing the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District Supreme Court case, then brought the idea to full fruition.

“She said something like, ‘It’s analysis worthy of a law journal article in the future,’” Pitschke recalled. “And I thought, ‘Well, why the future? Why not now?’”

It was the lightbulb moment that led to the launch of the Mount Holyoke College Undergraduate Law Journal, which is currently in its first semester and is the first undergraduate law journal of its kind at the College. Sloop, who is currently studying abroad in France, is the founding vice president, with Pitschke as the founding president and editor-in-chief. Both students worked diligently last fall to craft a constitution for the student organization. Eight students now serve on the law journal’s board, which currently has 66 registered student participants. President Holley serves as faculty advisor — a boon for the organization given her expertise in law.

“We just thought that it would be really cool to provide a space for students to channel their passions into something that can be empowering and productive,” Pitschke said of the journal. “We thought that [the law journal] would be especially interesting because there seems to be such an interest in generating and engaging with knowledge and analysis of legal decisions. And we thought that it could be a productive skill-building opportunity through an organization.”

While acknowledging that pre-law students might be especially interested in submitting to the undergraduate law journal, the publication itself aims to attract students from a variety of disciplines who are passionate about different subjects and looking to advance their skills in critical analysis.

“ We’ve worked really hard to try and design an organization that’s a little bit more accessible,” Pitschke said. “So, people of all different majors should feel encouraged to partake.”

The undergraduate law journal website is still under construction, but the submission process is relatively simple. For the spring 2025 semester, students are invited to submit their work anytime before April 6, 2025. Contributors will then be paired with an editor to help polish and refine their argument — including everything from helping to form citations to fact-checking and proofreading. After that first review stage, the submission will go to the editor-in-chief for final review and approval. The law journal is also taking applications from prospective editors — the deadline to apply for an editor role is March 31, 2025.

Pitschke says the goal is to publish a print version of the journal every semester. The website will maintain a faster publication cycle, enabling students to quickly publish on pressing issues.

“ I think it’s important to note that the contributors own their own arguments and own their own perspectives, and not everything that is published is going to be agreeable,” Pitschke said. “[The editing team is] also hoping that we can focus a little bit more on legal argumentation and a little bit less on … the political implications.”

It’s an ambitious goal for a charged political moment, but that’s ultimately the purpose of the law journal — to prepare students to continue to engage with the law in a healthy way that sharpens their minds going forward.

“How can we adjust this article or steer this article in a direction that can be a little bit more productive or a little bit more insightful?” Pitschke said of the editorial process. “We’re really excited for students to sort of form some really interesting skills that they can utilize going forward in their careers, regardless of where that takes them specifically.”