The Strathmore Law Review welcomes original submissions from authors. Articles sent after the submission deadline will be published in the next year’s volume. The Review strongly prefers to receive submissions online via this website. Direct email submissions, however, will also be accepted at lawreview@strathmore.edu. The Review typically will not consider hard copy submissions.

The Review prefers to publish full-length articles (i.e., 7,000 to 10,000 words), but will consider other original works at its discretion. Other original works includes essays related to the law and in the realm of the legal industry. Examples may be normative law articles, essays on the legal profession, legal education or legal research and writing itself.

Books reviews, case commentaries, legislative commentaries are also welcome (up to 5000 words). The Review considers submissions from undergraduate and masters students from any university and is published every mid-year.

To publish in Strathmore Law Review, authors should accept and fulfil the following requirements:

• Stylistic and bibliographic requirements
• Copyright License
• Legal and ethical standards

Stylistic and bibliographic requirements. The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format. Its content should be organised as follows:

(Page 1)
– Title and authors.
– Author(s) name and last name; academic filiation (with its city and country) and his/her relationship to the institution (professor, researcher, etc.); email address and ORCID number.
– Research scholarships or funds received for the paper (if pertinent).

(Page 2)
– Title.
– Abstract (in original language and English). We recommend using 150-250 words, with the following content: scope, method, paper’s structure and conclusion.
– Five keywords in alphabetical order. We recommend that the authors rely on the  Unesco Thesaurus .

(Next pages)
– Title.
– The text of the contribution. Reference to the authors should be avoided, in order to allow anonymous evaluation.
– Style, citations and references should follow Strathmore Law Simplified Legal Citation (SLASLEC) requirements. Where available, URLs and DOI numbers for the references have been provided.

The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

Books reviews, case commentaries, and legislative commentaries should follow the aforementioned rules. However, abstracts are not required in a short book review.

Authors publishing in our Journal should comply with the following terms:

1. Authors keep their work’s copyrights, but they guarantee Strathmore Law Review to be the first publisher of their papers. They grant the Journal a Creative Commons Attribution License, under which their work can be shared with the condition that it is appropriately cited.
2. Authors are aware and accept that the Strathmore Law Review staff will try to give the greatest diffusion to the journal, which means, among other things, that its printed and electronic editions will be distributed among different databases and scientific indexes.
3. Authors can establish further clauses for non-exclusive distribution, such as publication on a separate book or placing in an institutional database. Nevertheless, a note should be always added to explain that the paper was originally published in Strathmore Law Review.
4. We permit and encourage authors to share their work through Internet before and during the editorial process to receive further recommendations and wider references (we recommend you read the article The Effect of Open Access).

Legal and ethical standards
All articles must comply with our ethical standards (based on COPE standards) and, at the end of the review process, authors must sign a Statement of Originality and Authorization for Publication.

Submissions should pass the electronic plagiarism control (i.e., Viper, Plagium, Quetext, Grammarly, Plagiarisma, iThenticate or Copyleaks). To avoid ghostwriting practices (a failure to declare as authors who have written, spoken or contributed substantially to research), the Editor reserves the right to ask for some clarification about the individual contribution of each author in the research, in the acquisition of data, in analysis and interpretation, in drafting the article or in revising it critically, as well as information about sources of research funding.

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. The user may at any time exercise their rights of access, rectification, cancellation, and opposition by contacting the following email address: lawreview@strathmore.edu.

The Strathmore Law Review is an annual peer-reviewed, student-edited academic law journal published by the Strathmore University Law School in conjunction with the Strathmore University Press. It considers submissions from undergraduate and masters students from any university and is published every mid-year.

In the recent past, the Strathmore Law Review has earned a reputation as one of the Africa’s leading law journals by consistently publishing groundbreaking and challenging contributions to the arena of legal scholarship in Africa. From its inception, the Strathmore Law Review publishes one volume annually.

The first editorial board consisted of five student editors. Anyone else who joined the team since then would undergo a competitive application process that involved only writing. The Board has grown steadily over the years and expanding to a point where new positions have been created to facilitate the smooth running of the journal such as a Digital Publishing editor. The expansion of the board as well as the increase in papers submitted to the Strathmore Law Review necessitated the move from having one panel discussion consisting of all the editors regarding the publishability of a paper, to as many as 3 separate panels that do the same.

In 2020, the Strathmore Law Review commenced the inaugural Yash & Jill Cotrell Ghai writing prize to award the best article in the volume with 1000 USD cash prize. The Strathmore Law Review looks forward to even greater groundbreaking articles.

When it came to instituting a philosophy, key questions confronted the board in the creation of a successful African law journal. Some of these ranged from ‘what role will the SLR play in society?’ ‘What sort of writings will the SLR seek to publish?’ and ‘Should the SLR use the peer review or non-peer review system?’ as well as ‘what systems should the SLR use to recruit?’ ‘How does the SLR build the capacity of team members?’ ‘How will the SLR communicate with authors?’ and ‘How will the SLR make prospective authors confident enough to submit their work?’ All these considerations informed the philosophy that runs the Review.

With the Strathmore Law Review continuing to publish year-after-year, it continues to uphold the vision of its founders in not only creating a high-level platform for young budding African scholars to publish their work but to foster an attitude of consistency and excellence through legal writing and publishing. A vision that is uncompromisingly carried on by each new board that inherits it.