Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.'s offhand 2011 criticism of law review articles has stung legal academics ever since. Nearly four years later, his comment has finally met its match in the form of … a law review article. “Someone had to do it,” said George Washington University Law School professor Orin Kerr, author of the piece.

What Kerr did was the first — and perhaps the last — examination of the influence of German philosopher Immanuel Kant on the law of evidence in 18th ­century Bulgaria. That stunningly obscure topic begged to be addressed when Roberts made this comment during a conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit: “Pick up a copy of any law review that you see and the first article is likely to be, you know, the influence of Immanuel Kant on evidentiary approaches in 18th-century Bulgaria, or something, which I'm sure was of great interest to the academic that wrote it, but isn't of much help to the bar.”

Roberts' comment went unanswered until Kerr wrote his article, which will be published soon in The Green Bag. In an interview, Kerr said Roberts' mocking comment has had “tremendous staying power” ever since. “It has become the standard line to invoke when discussing the relevance of scholarship to practicing lawyers,” he said.