STATS UPDATE: Jim Lindgren’s Yale Law Journal deconstruction of Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America has now been downloaded 74,584 times since it was posted last Friday afternoon. Still no word from Emory, but expect something soon. If you’re late to the Bellesiles story, you might want to read this piece by Melissa Seckora, along with this piece by Kimberly Strassel.

The great public interest in the case is shown by how many times Lindgren’s piece has been downloaded. (Law review articles aren’t what you’d call sexy, in general.) By way of contrast, the piece that Professor Brannon Denning and I wrote on the Miller case has been downloaded 1113 times, and the piece of mine on jury nullification has been downloaded 2660 times; the piece on how Robert Bork gets originalism all wrong has been downloaded 1123 times, despite being on the server now for nearly a month.

Ordinarily, these would be impressive numbers (most law reviews don’t have circulations that high!), but the huge number of times Lindgren’s piece has been downloaded indicates a degree of public interest that may be unparalleled for a law review article. I’m certain that this is more downloads than any law review article hosted on the Social Science Research Network site has ever gotten (I think the record there is something like 27,000 — and over a period of several years).

Somebody ought to give Lindgren a book contract.