Cover of the May 4, 1940 issue of the Harvard Law Revue
In the spring of 1992, controversy erupted at Harvard Law School over the law review staff’s annual parody edition, the Harvard Law Revue, which was distributed at that year’s transition banquet. It included a biting parody of an article by feminist law professor Mary Joe Frug, who had been violently murdered in Cambridge one year prior. As the New York Times described the parody, “[i]t depicted Ms. Frug as a humorless, sex-starved mediocrity and dubbed her the ‘Rigor-Mortis Professor of Law.’” Yikes. Nearly the entire faculty condemned the piece, and the eight editors who oversaw it – including a young Paul Clement – issued apologies.
Recently I ran across a handful of much older issues of the Revue in the Yale Law School library, and I can now say that 1992 was not the first instance of iffy comedy in the Revue. Like the 1992 edition, the issues I found in the library, which dated back to 1934, had doubled as banquet place cards and law review satire. There was some good humor in them, including a slam on Yale in the 1934 issue that I particularly liked: the Revue printed a fictional statute defining “law reviews” as “all American periodicals devoted to writing on legal subjects, and the Yale Law Journal.”
Zing!
I also enjoyed a fake ad that read, “Have You Ever Had To Support an Insupportable Proposition? For a small sum we will arrange for the filing in the Harvard Law School library of an ‘unpublished thesis’ supporting your proposition.” (You can click to enlarge any of these images.)
An "advertisement" from the April 28, 1934 issue.
But in addition to the gentler humor were some bewildering shock-statements that do not seem to fit the time. In fact, they’d barely pass muster at a modern comedy club.
Just last month, the New York Times announced the onset of “rape humor” among aggressive (and female) New York comedians. So imagine my surprise when I found a Harvard Law Revue “Note” from 1940 announcing that the Harvard Law Review would be publishing “livelier” fare the next year, including the “startling exposé” Fifty Years of American Rape. The reference to that article offered a footnote bearing this pun: “Give a man enough rape and he’ll hang himself.”
A "Note" from the May 4, 1940 issue.
What? Rape jokes at pre-war Harvard Law School? Really?
And speaking of the war, that same issue includes a mostly censored “book revue” of “Mein Krampf” written by “No. 3478963,” who is identified as “Onetime Professor of Law, now visiting lecturer at Dachau Concentration Camp.” Meanwhile, Hitler is identified as “Reporter for Restatement of International Law.”
A "book revue" from the May 4, 1940 issue
Whoa! Now, this was 1940, when American awareness of Hitler’s machinations was incomplete, but even today, I think we’d respond: “Too soon.”