From 2021, two of the four issues published annually by the Journal are General Issues, made up of articles on a broad range of topics, and two are part-General part-Thematic Issues, which include a Thematic component which focuses and brings together a range of perspectives on a single subject.

Submission Guidelines

The Journal encourages the submission of a range of works on any current legal topic, by academics, legal professionals and students from Australia and abroad. We seek to publish contributions that provide new insights across all areas of law and which will be of interest to a generalist Australian legal audience.

Electronic Submission
All submissions must be uploaded as a Microsoft Word document. We recommend that submissions follow the Australian Guide to Legal Citation, Fourth Edition (‘AGLC’) as supplemented by the UNSW Law Journal Additions to the AGLC. Although compliance with the AGLC is not a consideration in selecting articles for publication, authors will be required to ensure their submission conforms to these rules if it is accepted for publication.

If your article is accepted for publication for a General Issue, please be advised it will take approximately one year between acceptance and publication.

Article Length Limitations & Originality
The word range for articles submitted to the Journal is 7,000 to 13,000 words in length (excluding footnotes), though this is subject to the Editor’s discretion. Works submitted for consideration must be original contributions that have not been published previously, and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Articles included on online repositories such as SSRN and institutional archives should be taken down prior to submission, to preserve anonymity for the peer review process.

Substantial Linkage with Australian Law
Submissions will only be considered for a General Issue if they demonstrate a sufficient connection with Australian law. The Journal does not accept submissions that focus on foreign domestic law unless they offer a comparative analysis or other substantial linkage with Australian law. Please note that Thematic Issues may not be subject to this restriction, and may consider articles that demonstrate a sufficient connection between the thematic topic and international law. Authors should consult the relevant call for contributions for guidance on the scope of a thematic.

The Forum Submission Guidelines
The Forum accepts a variety of submission types, including short essays, case comments, legislation comments, article responses, book reviews, and audio-visual recordings. Written submissions to the Forum must be less than 5,000 words, and audio-visual recordings should be under 30 minutes in length.

The Forum is not a blog and will be subject to the same rigorous editing process as articles published in our print publication. Submissions will be peer reviewed by at least two reviewers if appropriate, and pieces accepted for publication will be hosted on the Journal’s website, as well as being available on all the major databases that currently host articles published in the UNSW Law Journal.

As with all submissions to the Journal, the Forum does not publish articles that have been, or will be, published elsewhere, either in identical or substantially similar form. If articles are posted on online repositories, such as SSRN, they should be removed at the time of submission to ensure the anonymity of the peer review process. We recommend that all Forum submissions follow the latest edition of the AGLC, as supplemented by the UNSW Law Journal Additions to the AGLC.