From harvard-law-review-skills
Runs a law-review preemption check across SSRN, Westlaw/Lexis, HeinOnline, and Google Scholar to verify an argument hasn't already been published before drafting.
How this skill is triggered — by the user, by Claude, or both
Slash command
/harvard-law-review-skills:hlr-preemption-checkThe summary Claude sees in its skill listing — used to decide when to auto-load this skill
In legal scholarship, **"preemption"** means: has someone already published your argument? Running this
In legal scholarship, "preemption" means: has someone already published your argument? Running this search before you write is the single highest-return habit in the field — discovering that your claim appeared in a 2024 article after you have drafted 25,000 words is the classic wasted summer. A clean preemption check both protects originality and sharpens your contribution against the nearest prior work.
| Source | What it catches | Note |
|---|---|---|
| SSRN / bepress | Working papers and forthcoming articles not yet in print | Catches the most recent, still-in-press work — the highest preemption risk |
| Westlaw / Lexis journals databases | Published law-review articles, full text | Use field-restricted and date-restricted queries |
| HeinOnline | Deep historical law-review archive, PDF page images | Best for older and exact-pinpoint history of an idea |
| Google Scholar | Cross-disciplinary and gray-literature reach | Catches non-law work and citation chains |
hlr-argument-structure for engagement).hlr-thesis-and-contribution.A preemption check protects originality: has this argument been published? The literature review in
the body does different work — it situates the claim among the scholarship a generalist editor expects you
to engage (handled inside hlr-argument-structure). The same searches feed both: the nearest neighbors you
find here become the works you distinguish in the body. Do not let a clean preemption result excuse a thin
literature engagement, and do not let a thorough literature review substitute for the targeted, claim-level
preemption search — they answer different questions.
A hypothetical author plans to argue that a doctrine D should be abolished. A topic-level search for "D" returns hundreds of hits and feels hopeless. Re-running the search at the argument level — "D" + "abolition" + the distinctive ground the author relies on — surfaces only two close pieces: one argues for narrowing D (not abolishing it), the other abolishes D on different grounds. The verdict is partially preempted: the claim survives, recast as "prior work narrows D or abolishes it on ground X; this Article abolishes it on the stronger ground Y." The contribution is now sharper because of the search. (Counts and grounds illustrative.)
【Claim searched】the specific argument (not the topic)
【Databases】SSRN / Westlaw-Lexis / HeinOnline / Scholar [all run? Y/N]
【Nearest neighbors】the 3-5 closest pieces (author, year, the move they make)
【Verdict】new / partially preempted / preempted
【Refinement】how the claim now differs from each neighbor
【Next】hlr-argument-structure (if new) or hlr-thesis-and-contribution (if recast)
../../resources/external_tools.md — SSRN, Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline access notes../../resources/official-source-map.md — sourcing discipline for originality claimsnpx claudepluginhub brycewang-stanford/awesome-journal-skills --plugin harvard-law-review-skillsSearches SSRN, Westlaw, HeinOnline, and Google Scholar to verify a YLJ claim is novel, then writes a 'what's new' paragraph distinguishing it from prior work.
Routes Harvard Law Review submissions through the student-edited law-review process by lifecycle stage, from topic selection to placement and editing.
Verifies citations in academic/legal manuscripts by checking existence, accuracy, quotes, and claim grounding using Paperpile, BibTeX, and RAG.