American Criminal Law Review

The American Criminal Law Review is a student-edited scholarly journal published at Georgetown University Law Center. The ACLR is a journal of American criminal law and white-collar crime.

ACLR adopts a mix of symposia, articles, and notes. The journal is the most cited criminal law journal by courts, with fifty-seven case cites from 2005-2012 (the 38th most of any American law review), and the second most cited criminal law journal by other law reviews, with 1,217 cites from 2005-2012.

The American Criminal Law Review was first published in 1962 by the USC Gould School of Law in conjunction with the American Bar Association. The ABA moved the publication to the University of Kansas School of Law the following year and changed its title to the American Criminal Law Quarterly ("ACLQ"). As an ABA publication, the ACLQ concentrated on a practitioner's approach to the criminal law.

In 1971, Professor Samuel Dash was elected chairman of the ABA's Criminal Law Section and moved from the University of Kansas School of Law to Georgetown University Law Center. Professor Dash brought the journal with him and changed its name to the American Criminal Law Review. Now edited by students, each issue originally dealt with a single topic. Volume 10, Number 1—the first issue published at Georgetown and under the American Criminal Law review name—presented a symposium on military law, and began with an essay by the Chief of Staff of the United States Army at the time, Gen. William Westmoreland. That format lasted for only three academic years.

In the fall of 1980, the First Survey of White Collar Crime appeared in Volume 18, Number 2. It has evolved into the ACLR's best-known publication. One hornbook, on White Collar Crime by J. Kelly Strader, referred his readers to the Annual Survey, writing: "Readers should note that this area of the law is changing rapidly. For a more extensive discussion of any particular subject, the reader may wish to refer to…The Annual Survey of White Collar Crime…."