Submissions

Author Guidelines

The editorial team of our journal invites submissions in the form of studies, articles, commentaries, and book reviews. Contributions need not be limited to the analysis of positive law, but may also involve any scientific approach, including doctrinal research, law in context, or law and economics. Although the editorial board is based in Romania, our team encourages contributions concerning any legal system, as well as comparative and transdisciplinary research.

Publication is conditional on respecting the following author guidelines, the publication ethics policies, as well as securing a positive result in the peer review process.

Editors reserve the right to alter submissions to uphold the house style of the journal. Prior to peer review, editors shall examine the grammar and orthography (including syntax and punctuation) of every submission with a view to encourage clarity, accuracy and coherence, while eliminating tautology, ambiguity and circumlocution.

§1. Dimension

• Studies are theoretical analyses which are thoroughly footed in relevant legal literature and case law, reflective of the current level of knowledge in the field, which make an original scientific contribution. As a rule, they should be above 5,000 words, while not exceeding 10,000 words (both figures include footnotes). They are subject to peer review and must be written entirely in English.
• Articles are theoretical and/or practical analyses, founded on legal literature or case law, reflecting the current knowledge level and aiming to make an original contribution. As a rule, they should be above 3,000 words, while not exceeding 6,000 words (both figures include footnotes). They are subject to peer review and must be written entirely in English.
• Commentaries can be either case notes (annotated judgments, case summaries or case analyses) or policy briefs. No submission should exceed 5,000 words (apart from case summaries, for which an upper limit of 3,000 words is expected). They are not subject to peer review and may also be published in Romanian.
• Book reviews are usually commissioned by the editorial team. Still, our team also welcomes unsolicited contributions not exceeding 3,000 words. They are not subject to peer review and may also be published in Romanian.

Exceptions shall be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, whenever the nature of the research or other reasonable circumstances may require such derogation.

§2. Stylistic conventions

• Title, author(s), and abstract

The main title of the paper should appear bolded and centred at the very beginning of the first page. The name of the author(s) should appear immediately below the title, followed by an asterisk corresponding to the first footnote (asterisked, not numbered), indicating the current institutional affiliation and e-mail address. Authors must also specify their ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), which can be obtained at http://orcid.org.

As per Western naming conventions, please consider that the first name (forename or given name) is followed by the middle names and last name (surname or family name). Any academic ranks (e.g., professor, associate professor, lecturer) or postnominals (e.g., PhD, LLM, LLD etc.) should only be included in the first footnote. Acknowledgements and/or disclosures of competing interests (conflicts of interest) should be given in a separate line within the same asterisked footnote.

Studies and articles should also contain an abstract (max. 250 words) and keywords (between 5 to 7) in English. Commentaries and book reviews are not subject to this condition and shall be published in either English or Romanian, without abstract or keywords.

• Text

All original research submissions (studies and articles) should be written in English. If this is not your native language, the editorial team strongly recommends having the paper checked by a native speaker. The main body should be indented (1 cm), and justified (aligned from the left to the right margin). Capitalisation ought to be used sparingly: for example, in the proper names of persons, places or institutions, as well as in acronyms and abbreviations. Common nouns should be lower case even. Legal traditions should be capitalised (e.g., Common Law, Civil Law), yet branches (e.g., civil law) or sources of law (e.g., common law) should be lower case.

Italics may be used for highlighting certain fragments. Single spaces ought to be used after (but never before) most punctuation marks (full stop, colon, semicolon, question or exclamation marks), except for the use of quotation marks, parentheses, or brackets (which should use single space before the first element and after the last), as well as dashes (which require single space both before and after the punctuation mark).

If the quotation already includes quotation marks, these shall be rendered in French style («example»). Quotations longer than three lines ought to be presented as fully indented paragraphs, separated from the main text by a single line both before and after, and without quotation marks (unless they are quotations within quotations). Indentation should be larger than the value used for the first line in main paragraphs (2 cm, rather than 1 cm), and used for every line (as opposed to no indentation for the main text, apart from the first line).

Quotations in languages other than English should be translated, with the original text reproduced in a footnote whenever it might be of interest to the reader. Latin words and expressions, as well as fragments reproduced in languages other than English, should be italicised, except if they have been taken into English usage (e.g., i.e., etc.).

• Headings

The editors encourage authors to divide the paper into sections and subsections, but caution against using more than three degrees of headings. When used, headings should be bolded. For example:

1. First level

1.1. Second level

(a) Third level

The paper may be further structured by dividing the main text into numbered paragraphs with bolded, marginal text (e.g., 1. Marginal text. Main text). Often, numbered paragraphs are comprised of two or more blocks of text (ordinary paragraphs).

§3. References

With respect to references, our journal adheres to the style of the Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA 4^th edn, 2012), available for download here.