Thread by @OrinKerr

Over at Prawfs, Paul Horwitz conducts the very first ever empirical study of the rise of novelty claims in law review articles -- finding a roughly 10x increase over 20 years. (Too bad the post is already placed, though.)
prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/20…

Paul comments:

My advice: If you feel it's accurate, feel free to make a direct novelty claim ("this is the first article to...") in the draft you submit to journals. But change it to avoid that formulation by the final. With novelty claims, as in other writing, best to show, don't tell.

Put another way, direct novelty claims have become so common and so formulaic that they come off as a bit amateurish. You'll sound more sophisticated if you don't make that direct claim.

An alternative might be to say something like, "This issue is particularly important because it has not been addressed in prior scholarship," adding a FN to what else similar is out there, showing why it's not on the same.

Responding to Paul Horwitz at Prawfs filled me with so much nostalgia that I turned this into a Volokh post that doesn't even mention Josh Blackman at all.
reason.com/volokh/2021/12…