Is David Luban Being Serious?

I almost fell out of my chair when I read this:

Comparing the quality of articles in the top student-edited law reviews with the quality of articles in the top peer-reviewed philosophy journals (my own scholarly point of reference), I have never been able to detect superiority in the peer-reviewed philosophy journals. By and large, I think that law review editors – at least at the top law reviews, where the editors have an embarrassment of riches to choose from – have been pretty good gatekeepers.

Perhaps what Professor Luban meant is only that the quality of the most high-profile law review articles about law is on a par with the quality of the most high-profile philosophy journal articles, by reference to the standards of each discipline. But surely Professor Luban would have to agree that the sophomoric philosophical twaddle that has appeared in leading law reviews--Joseph Singer on "The Player and the Cards:  Nihilism and Legal Theory" in the Yale Law Journal, Gary Peller on "The Metaphysics of American Law" in the California Law Review, Pierre Schlag on "The Problem of the Subject" in the Texas Law Review, etc.--would never have appeared in even second- or third-tier journals edited by philosophers.