Criminal Law Review

About Criminal Law Review

Criminal Law Review — Full Journal Profile

Criminal Law Review (ISO 4 abbreviation Crim. Law Rev.) is a peer-reviewed academic and practitioner journal covering the criminal law and criminal justice of England and Wales. It has been published since January 1954, is published monthly by Sweet & Maxwell — Thomson Reuters trading as Sweet & Maxwell, in England and Wales — and is identified in the Journals World record by print ISSN 0011-135X. A web ISSN, 2754-1665, is listed for the journal in the bibliographic summary consulted for this profile. The journal's stated purpose, in the publisher's own long-standing description, is to keep criminal lawyers up to date with new developments in law and practice while also advancing scholarly debate. That dual purpose — scholarly analysis alongside practitioner updating — is the single most important fact for any author, reader or evaluator to understand about this title, because it explains the journal's contents, its readership, its citation pattern and its place in English legal life.

This profile is anchored to the Journals World record for post 34083 (slug criminal-law-review), which records the journal as published in the United Kingdom, with Scopus-style coverage listed in fragments from 1974 and continuously from 1996 to 2025, and an h-index of 30. Where a figure in this profile comes from a particular source, that source is named. Where a fact could not be verified from a source actually consulted for this profile, it is stated plainly as not published, not publicly disclosed, or could not be verified, rather than guessed.

Identity at a Glance

• Title: Criminal Law Review
• Abbreviation: Crim. Law Rev. (ISO 4)
• Print ISSN: 0011-135X (Journals World record; also printed in the publisher's sample issue)
• Web ISSN: 2754-1665 (listed in the bibliographic summary consulted)
• Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell (Thomson Reuters), England and Wales, United Kingdom
• Country: United Kingdom
• Language: English
• Frequency: Monthly
• Founded: January 1954; founding editors John Burke and Peter Allsop
• Editor-in-chief: Hannah Quirk (King's College London), since 2023
• Field: Criminal law and criminal justice, primarily England and Wales
• LCCN: sf86007061; OCLC: 880469267 (bibliographic summary consulted)

History and Continuity

The journal was established in January 1954, which makes it one of the longest-running specialist criminal law periodicals in the common-law world. Its founding editors were John Burke and Peter Allsop, who led it from 1954 to 1964. The succession of editors-in-chief recorded in the bibliographic history consulted for this profile then runs: Edward Griew (1964–1966), Brian Hogan (1966–1973), David Lanham (1973–1975), Andrew Ashworth (1975–1998), Ian Dennis (1999–2011), David Ormerod (2012–2023) and Hannah Quirk (since 2023). That list is itself a small history of English criminal law scholarship: several of these editors are among the most cited criminal law academics of their generations, and the long tenures — Ashworth for more than two decades, Dennis and Ormerod for more than a decade each — gave the journal an unusually stable editorial identity.

Stability matters for a law journal of this kind. Criminal law changes through statute, through appellate decisions and through practice directions, and a monthly journal that comments on those changes must be both fast and reliable. The Criminal Law Review built its reputation by doing two things at once: reporting and commenting on new cases quickly, in its Cases and Comments material, and publishing longer analytical articles that step back from individual decisions to examine doctrine, principle and reform proposals. The sample issue published by Sweet & Maxwell and consulted for this profile shows that structure in action: substantive articles at the front, followed by a Cases and Comments section organised by topic — appeals to the Supreme Court, police disciplinary proceedings, procedure, sentencing and summing-up — each item carrying keywords from the Sweet & Maxwell Legal Taxonomy, the same taxonomy used in Westlaw UK.

The Journals World coverage note for this record — fragments in 1974, 1976–1978, 1982, 1985, 1988 and 1990–1991, then continuous coverage from 1996 to 2025 — should be read as a database coverage statement, not as a publication history. The journal itself has published continuously since 1954; the fragmented early years describe which years a particular indexing service holds or has digitised, a common pattern for law journals whose back files were indexed retrospectively. Authors citing the journal's age or continuity should therefore cite the 1954 founding, and treat the coverage fragments as information about database holdings.

Scope: What the Journal Publishes

The journal covers the full spectrum of criminal law and criminal justice, with a primary focus on the law of England and Wales. In practice that scope includes substantive criminal law — offences, defences, liability and inchoate liability; criminal procedure and evidence; sentencing law and practice; appeals; police powers and police accountability; regulatory and corporate offending where it is dealt with through the criminal process; and the institutions of criminal justice, from investigation through to punishment. Because the journal serves practitioners as well as academics, its scope also extends to the practical consequences of legal change: how a new appellate ruling affects charging, trial management, jury directions or sentence in real cases.

The contents pattern visible in the publisher's sample issue illustrates the balance. Longer articles take on contested questions — the sample issue consulted included, for example, a critical discussion of the challenges of fair and effective criminal proceedings for autistic suspects and defendants — while the case commentary section works through recent decisions one by one, explaining what was decided, why it matters and where it leaves the previous law. Book-related and legislative material, updates on Law Commission work and sentencing guideline developments sit naturally within the same scope, because the journal's readers need the whole moving picture of English criminal law, not only its appellate highlights.

Work that falls outside the scope should also be understood clearly. This is not a criminology journal in the sociological sense, although criminal justice policy analysis with a clear legal anchor can fit; it is not a comparative law journal, although comparative material that illuminates English and Welsh law is part of legal debate; and it is not a general law review, so a manuscript with no substantial criminal law or criminal justice component belongs elsewhere. The OpenAlex topic profile for the resolved source (see Metrics below) is consistent with this picture: its largest topic clusters for the works it holds are Criminal Law and Policy and Criminal Law and Evidence, followed by legal process and jurisprudence and criminal justice and penology topics.

Editorial Leadership

The editor-in-chief is Hannah Quirk of King's College London, in post since 2023, according to the bibliographic history consulted for this profile. She succeeded David Ormerod (2012–2023), a former Law Commissioner whose tenure coincided with a period of intense statutory and guideline change in sentencing and procedure. The full past-editor list is given in the History section above. A complete current editorial board list, with affiliations for every board member, could not be verified from a source actually fetched for this profile, and is therefore not reproduced here; readers who need the current board should consult the journal's current issue front matter or the publisher's journal pages directly, because board membership in a monthly practitioner-scholarly journal changes with editorial terms and should never be copied from a stale listing.

That caution is practical, not evasive. Law journals of this standing are edited by named scholars whose authority underpins the commentary, and the front matter of each issue — which in the sample issue consulted also carries the publisher's registered details, Thomson Reuters trading as Sweet & Maxwell, registered in England and Wales, with its registered office at 5 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London — is the authoritative place to confirm who edited a given issue. For citation and evaluation purposes, the editor at the time of the issue cited is the relevant fact.

Indexing, Taxonomy and Discoverability

The journal is indexed in Scopus, according to the bibliographic summary consulted, and its h-index of 30 in the Journals World record is consistent with a Scopus-based record of long standing. Its content is also discoverable through the publisher's own legal research ecosystem: every article and case commentary in an issue is allocated keywords from the Legal Taxonomy used by Sweet & Maxwell, identical to those used in Westlaw UK and in other Sweet & Maxwell publications such as the Legal Journals Index, as the publisher's sample issue explains. For a practitioner journal this taxonomy indexing is arguably as important as citation-database indexing, because most of its professional readers find material through Westlaw searches by legal concept rather than through academic bibliographic databases.

A DOAJ listing for ISSN 0011-135X could not be verified: a Directory of Open Access Journals search-API query for that ISSN, run for this profile, returned no record. That result is reported exactly as found and should not be over-read — the journal is a subscription law journal, not an open-access title, so absence from an open-access directory is expected and says nothing about quality or legitimacy. Likewise, the journal should not be described as open access in any listing: its publication model is the traditional subscription model described below.

Metrics, Read Honestly

Three different numbers circulate for this journal, and a responsible profile must keep them apart. First, the Journals World record for this post gives an h-index of 30, on a Scopus-style record: 30 publications in the set have each been cited at least 30 times. Second, the stored record classifies the journal in the fourth quartile (Q4) in its category listing — a quartile is a relative position within a subject category in a given year, not a quality verdict, and for a jurisdiction-specific practitioner law journal it largely reflects citation cultures: English criminal law is cited mainly by English courts, practitioners and a comparatively small academic community, so citation-density comparisons with large international science fields are meaningless. Third, OpenAlex: resolving ISSN 0011-135X through the OpenAlex sources endpoint gives source S137714635, which OpenAlex holds under the journal's name with 72 works, 411 citations and summary statistics including an h-index of 10 and an i10-index of 10, with its held works concentrated in 1967–2021 and very few held works in recent years.

The OpenAlex figures are reported here with an explicit warning, because they are visibly partial for this title. A monthly journal publishing since 1954 produces far more than 72 items; OpenAlex simply holds a small, older subset of its output, most likely because case comments and practitioner material in subscription law journals are poorly captured by open bibliographic ingestion. No evaluator should quote the OpenAlex work count as the journal's output, and no author should treat its OpenAlex h-index as comparable to the Scopus-based figure. The honest summary is: a long-established, Scopus-indexed journal with an h-index of 30 on the Scopus-style record held by Journals World; a Q4 category position on that same record, which reflects field citation density rather than editorial standing; and incomplete open-bibliographic coverage that understates the journal. A Journal Impact Factor for this title is not published in any source actually consulted for this profile, and none is claimed here.

Publication Model, Access and Charges

The journal is published monthly by Sweet & Maxwell, part of Thomson Reuters. Access is by subscription, in print and through the publisher's online legal research services; the sample issue consulted was produced by Sweet & Maxwell and printed and bound in Great Britain. Article processing charges, submission fees and open-access options for this journal are not publicly disclosed in any source actually consulted for this profile, and none should be assumed: subscription law journals of this type traditionally do not charge authors, but the only safe statement is that author charges could not be verified and must be confirmed with the publisher before submission. Subscription prices are likewise set by the publisher for institutions and individuals and are not reproduced here, because they change annually and differ by format and territory.

Publishing in the Journal: Guidance for Authors

Prospective authors should write for the journal's actual dual readership. A successful Criminal Law Review article speaks to the academic reader through rigour and originality and to the practitioner reader through clarity about consequences: what the law now is, what it should be, and what difference the argument makes in court, in charging decisions or in sentencing. Case comments must do more than summarise a judgment — the journal's own commentary tradition evaluates reasoning, identifies what was left undecided and traces implications for related doctrine. Manuscripts should engage with current statute, current appellate authority and current Sentencing Council guidelines where relevant; an argument built on superseded law will not survive editorial scrutiny in a journal whose core promise is currency.

Formal submission requirements — word limits by article type, house style, anonymisation and the submission route itself — are set by the publisher and could not be verified in full from a source actually fetched for this profile, so they are not invented here. Authors should obtain the current contributor guidance from Sweet & Maxwell before submitting and follow it exactly, including its citation conventions for cases and legislation. Because the journal is monthly and news-sensitive, authors of case commentary should also expect currency to matter: a comment on a judgment delivered many months earlier needs a reason to exist beyond the judgment itself.

How to Verify This Journal

Verification is straightforward. The print ISSN 0011-135X appears both in the Journals World record and in the publisher's own sample issue. The publisher's identity is stated in that same issue: Thomson Reuters, trading as Sweet & Maxwell, registered in England and Wales. The journal's presence in Scopus can be checked in the Scopus source list under its ISSN, and its Westlaw UK presence can be checked by any subscriber searching the Legal Taxonomy terms for a criminal law topic. Anyone offered a look-alike journal, a solicitation email promising rapid publication in the Criminal Law Review for a fee, or a website using this title outside the publisher's own services should treat it as suspect and verify through the publisher directly: the genuine journal's route to print runs through Sweet & Maxwell, and no third-party fee-for-publication service was identified in any source consulted for this profile.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of Criminal Law Review?
The print ISSN recorded for this post is 0011-135X. A web ISSN of 2754-1665 is listed in the bibliographic summary consulted for this profile.

Who publishes Criminal Law Review?
Sweet & Maxwell, which is Thomson Reuters trading as Sweet & Maxwell, in England and Wales, United Kingdom.

When was Criminal Law Review founded, and how often does it appear?
It was established in January 1954 by founding editors John Burke and Peter Allsop, and it is published monthly.

Who is the current editor-in-chief?
Hannah Quirk (King's College London), since 2023, succeeding David Ormerod.

What are the journal's metrics?
The Journals World record gives an h-index of 30 and a Q4 category position. OpenAlex holds only a partial subset of the journal (source S137714635: 72 works, 411 citations), so its figures understate the journal and are not comparable to the Scopus-based record.

Is Criminal Law Review open access?
No open-access model could be verified, and a DOAJ search-API query for its ISSN returned no record for this profile. It operates as a subscription journal; author charges, if any, are not publicly disclosed in the sources consulted and could not be verified.

What does Criminal Law Review publish?
Scholarly articles and practitioner case commentary across the criminal law and criminal justice of England and Wales — substantive offences and defences, procedure and evidence, sentencing, appeals and police powers — written to keep criminal lawyers current while advancing scholarly debate.

Sources Consulted for This Profile

Journals World REST record for post 34083 (title, slug, ISSN 0011-135X, h-index 30, Q4 listing, coverage note, United Kingdom). Publisher's sample issue (Sweet & Maxwell / Thomson Reuters imprint details, ISSN, Legal Taxonomy and Westlaw UK keywording, Cases and Comments structure). Bibliographic summary of the journal (founding in January 1954, founding and succeeding editors, monthly frequency, Sweet & Maxwell as publisher, ISO 4 abbreviation, LCCN and OCLC numbers, web ISSN, Scopus indexing). OpenAlex sources endpoint resolved by ISSN and the resolved source record S137714635 (held works, citations, summary statistics and topics, reported with the partial-coverage warning above). DOAJ search-API query for ISSN 0011-135X (no record returned).

A final word on citing this journal correctly will save readers confusion. Cite it as Criminal Law Review, abbreviated Crim. Law Rev., with the year and, where the publisher's version is used, the Sweet & Maxwell issue — and do not shorten its title to forms belonging to other journals, such as the American Criminal Law Review or the Journal of Criminal Law, which are different titles, with different publishers and different ISSNs. The ISSN in the citation record, 0011-135X, is the disambiguator that travels with the reference through Scopus, Westlaw and library catalogues alike, and checking it takes seconds.