FACULTY QUALITY BASED ON MEMBERSHIP IN THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES, 2017-18

                                                                       August 2017

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences each year elects members based on their contributions to scholarship, the arts, education, business, or public affairs. In reality, the Academy tends to be a bit “chummy”—schools already “rich” with members get “richer,” not always on the merits—though the sins tend to be of omission rather than inclusion.  (See this earlier post. Ironically, the earlier prejudice against Legal Realists has not carried over to Critical Legal Studies faculty.)  Faculty also tend to be elected later in their careers (though, on average, female faculty are elected at younger ages than male faculty in the last generation) and untenured faculty are never elected. 

 

With those caveats in mind, here are the ten law schools with the highest percentage of faculty elected to one of the scholarly sections of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (excluding untenured faculty from the count for purposes of calculating the percentage). As you will see from the lists, below, total membership drops off rather quickly.  For purposes of this study, “faculty” means faculty who are wholly devoted to teaching and scholarship, even if they do so at more than one school, but only if they hold tenure in the Law School.  (Lists aim to be current for faculty affiliations come fall 2017.)  These criteria have the effect of excluding distinguished judges who still do some teaching (e.g., Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner, and Diane Wood at Chicago, or Guido Calabresi at Yale), as well as law faculty elected in non-scholarly sections of the American Academy, like educational administration (e.g., John Sexton at NYU or Mark Yudof at Berkeley [though he is now emeritus]). 

Rank	School	Percentage of Senior Faculty Elected to AAAS	Percent of Elected Faculty Over 70 in 2017
1	Yale Law School	46%	29%
2	Harvard Law School	30%	31%
	University of Chicago Law School	30%	33%
4	New York University School of Law	23%	32%
	Columbia Law School	23%	71%
6	Stanford Law School	18%	22%
7	University of California, Berkeley School of Law	12%	33%
8	University of Michigan Law School	11%	80%
	University of Virginia School of Law	11%	57%
10	Duke University School of Law	8%	0%
	Runners-up for the top ten
	Georgetown University Law Center	6%	33%
	Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law	6%	0%
	University of Pennsylvania Law School	5%	0%

 

Below is a list of the non-emeritus teaching faculty from each school ranked above who are elected to the Law Section of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Faculty 70 or older (in the year 2017) are marked with an *.  Those marked with an # were elected in a scholarly field other than Law.

 

Yale Law School: *Bruce Ackerman, Akhil Amar, Ian Ayres, Jack M. Balkin, R. Lea Brilmayer, Stephen Carter, William Eskridge, Heather Gerken, *Henry Hansmann, Harold Koh, Christine Jolls, Dan Kahan, *Anthony Kronman, *Robert C. Post, *George Priest, Judith Resnik, Roberta Romano, *Alan Schwartz, Reva Siegel, James Whitman, John Fabian Witt.

Harvard Law School: Lucian Bebchuk, *Robert Clark, Noah Feldman Richard Fallon, *Charles Fried, *Mary Ann Glendon, Jack L. Goldsmith III, Vicki Jackson, Randall Kennedy, Louis Kaplow, Michael Klarman, Lawrence Lessig, John Manning, Martha Minow, *Robert Mnookin, Gerald Neuman, #Annette Gordon Reed, Mark Roe, *Steven Shavell, Cass Sunstein, *Laurence Tribe, *Mark V. Tushnet, *Roberto Unger, Adrian Vermeule, David Wilkins, Jonathan Zittrain.

University of Chicago Law School:  Douglas G. Baird, Tom Ginsburg, *R.H. Helmholz, Saul Levmore, #*Martha C. Nussbaum, Eric A. Posner, *Geoffrey R. Stone, David A. Strauss, David Weisbach.

New York University School of Law:  *Jerome Cohen, *Richard Epstein, #*John Ferejohn, David Garland, Samuel Issacharoff, Marcel Kahan, Lewis Kornhauser, *Sylvia Law, Daryl Levinson, Geoffrey Miller, Trevor Morrison, *Burt Neuborne, Richard H. Pildes, Richard Revesz, *Daniel Rubinfeld, Bryan Stevenson, *Richard B. Stewart, Jeremy Waldron, Joseph Weiler.

Columbia Law School: *Vincent Blasi, Philip C. Bobbitt, *John Coffee, #*Robert Ferguson, *George Fletcher, *Ronald Gilson, Jane Ginsburg, *Michael Graetz, *Kent Greenawalt, Phillip Hamburger, Thomas W. Merrill, *Henry Monaghan, *Joseph Raz, *Robert Scott, *Michael Sovern, *Peter Strauss, Tim Wu.

Stanford Law School: John J. Donohue III, *Lawrence Friedman, *Deborah Hensler, Pamela Karlan, Mark Kelman, M. Elizabeth Magill, Michael McConnell, Deborah Rhode, George Triantis

University of California, Berkeley School of Law:  Erwin Chemerinsky, *Robert Cooter, Christopher F. Edley, Jr., Daniel Farber, Pamela Samuelson, *Franklin Zimring.

University of Michigan Law School:  #*Phoebe Ellsworth, *Bruce Frier, *Catharine MacKinnon, *Donald H. Regan, #Rebecca Scott.

University of Virginia School of Law:  *Kenneth S. Abraham, John C. Jeffries, Jr., Douglas Laycock, Paul G. Mahoney, #*John Monahan, *Frederick Schauer, *G. Edward White.

Duke University School of Law:  #Jack Knight, David F. Levi, #Mathew McCubbins

Georgetown University Law Center:  David Luban, *Louis Michael Seidman, Robin West.

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law: Bernard Black, Shari Seidman Diamond

University of Pennsylvania Law School:  Herbert Hovenkamp, #Beth Simmons

 

Other law school faculties with non-emeritus teaching faculty elected to the AAAS:

 

University of Texas School of Law:  *Sanford Levinson

University of California, Los Angeles School of Law:  Seana Shiffrin

University of Southern California Gould School of Law:  #*Gary Watson

Washington University School of Law:  #Lee Epstein

University of Arizona College of Law:  *Carol Rose

Tulane University Law School:  *James Gordley