Denver Law Review Celebrates 100 Years
Richard Koon, JD'66, speaks at the Denver Law Review's Centennial Celebration.
In April 2023, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends gathered to celebrate 100 years of the Denver Law Review, the flagship journal of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Through its storied history, the journal has featured such distinguished authors as U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, William O. Douglas, and Byron White, noted constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader.
The Denver Law Review is one of the oldest legal journals in the United States. Five years after its 1923 inception as the Denver Bar Association Record, the name of the publication changed to Dicta. It was published under that name until 1963, when the journal was renamed the Denver Law Center Journal. That was shortened to the Denver Law Journal in 1966 and changed to the Denver University Law Review in 1985. The journal became the Denver Law Review in 2015.
“The DLR [Denver Law Review] has been published in many forms and under many names, yet it has endured,” said alumnus Dick Koon, JD ’66. “For 100 years it has served to educate thousands of lawyers who were on its staffs and, we like to think, has educated just as many lawyers through articles that were timely and educational.”
According to Koon, the Denver Law Review offers students a prestigious opportunity.
“This was 58 years ago so my memory of the details is not 100 percent,” he said, “but as I recall you had to be invited to join the review and to get an invite you had to have a high grade average and you had to submit an article for publication – and undergo the editing which that entailed…I did whatever was required and was invited to join the staff.”
Koon explained that by his third year, he was elected to Editor in Chief, and the journal made one of its most important steps to date.
“That was also the year Bob Yegge was appointed to be the acting Dean of the Law School (later it became permanent),” Koon explained. “The first time we met he told me we were no longer going to co-publish the law review (then called the Denver Law Center Journal) with the Colorado and Denver Bar Associations, but we were going to go it alone. He gave me the task of coming up with a new name and design for the cover.”
Through the changes, the journal has never lost sight of its purpose. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, the journal continued its work to focus on impactful scholarship, particularly scholarship that amplifies historically underrepresented viewpoints.
In addition to celebrating the journal’s scholastic legacy, April’s Centennial Celebration also honored the strong bond formed among those who have worked on the journal. With alumni from each of the last six decades in attendance, there was an unmistakable sense of community uniting current and former members of the journal. It is this bond – and this intergenerational legacy – that makes the Denver Law Review a truly remarkable institution.
Onward to the next 100 years.
