Welcome to the Res Gestae: A Letter from the Editor-in-Chief

To the students, staff, greater Law School community, and all prospective Res Gestae readers,

I was at a lunch event with University of Michigan Law School alumni when one of the alums casually mentioned that, during his time as a law student, one of the organizations he had been a part of was the Res Gestae — the law school newspaper that existed at the time. I was surprised to learn that such a thing existed, especially because of my own background in journalism. As an undergraduate student of the University of Michigan, I served as a writer and editor of the college paper, The Michigan Daily, and knowing that the Law School had once also had a paper would only have increased my (admittedly, already very high) interest in this school when submitting my law school applications.

As soon as I learned about the Res Gestae, I found myself digging into the Law School Library Scholarship Repository, uncovering the archive of old editions and issues and devouring the snippets and snapshots of this very school, going back as far as 1950. The oldest issue seemed old-fashioned and formal, spanning four pages and establishing the purpose of the inception of the Res Gestae, highlighting esteemed faculty, and discussing the lack of coffee machines in the school. Fast forward 63 years to 2013, when the last edition of the Res Gestae was published — this one including a commentary on the market in Detroit, an interview with our very own Professor Daniel Halberstam, and the “Mailbag” (an advice column). From typewritten notes in the ’50s to photos and comics in the 2010s, the many iterations of the Res Gestae served to reflect the Law School over the years.

I knew that, if we wanted to bring the paper back, we needed to be very cognizant of the changing times — that meant ensuring there was a digital element to the Res Gestae. Back in the 2010s, there was a website that seemed to disappear when the paper petered off, but bringing back the web component made sense as the first step of the resurrection and revitalization of the Res Gestae. Ergo, this site.

But more than the practical elements of what makes up a newspaper in the 2020s (a website, future social media campaigns, etc.), the most important thing on our to-do list when it comes to this newspaper is ensuring that the Law School community is not only looped in but actually a living, breathing part of it all. That meant reaching out to students to see who wanted to be a part of the paper, figuring out what kinds of content they wanted to see addressed and featured within its pages, and doing anything and everything that we could to make this something that our Res Gestae predecessors would be proud of, all these years later. We wanted to honor the past and origins of this paper while simultaneously welcoming in new ideas and life.

So now, looking forward: We hope to publish a few times this year (online and in print as well) and bring forth a new era of the Res Gestae. The future is a question — we would love to see future generations continue this paper, but even if this is a short-lived endeavor, we hope to honor the students we set out to serve. What does that look like? Some formal writing, and some fun content. A mixture of things to reflect the variety of ideas and people at the Law School. Beyond that? I guess you’ll have to wait and see.

Editor-in-Chief Sabriya Imami can be reached at simami@umich.edu.