Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

Travelling this week, so more posts next week

October 31, 2022

Also Typepad, the blog service provider, melted down over the weekend, but seems to have come back to life. Apologies to readers.
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A new “Creative Commons” license that permits users to “remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially”

October 28, 2022

Some academics are concerned; law professors should feel free to weigh in on the discussion in the comments at the link.
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Links to all the 2021 Scholarly Impact ranking posts (final version) (for citations during 2016-2020)

October 26, 2022

ORIGINALLY POSTED FEBRUARY 16, 2022 Top 50 law faculties in overall scholarly impact, 2016-2020 Top 25 law faculties in median scholarly impact, 2016-2020 10 Most-Cited Faculty in the US, 2016-2020 20 Most-Cited in Administrative and/or Environmental Law 10 Most-Cited in Antitrust 10 Most-Cited in Civil Procedure 10 Most-Cited in Commercial Law 20 Most-Cited in Constitutional…
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Is US News an “authoritative” ranking of law schools?

October 25, 2022

I know this question will make readers of this blog laugh, even as they recognize the pernicious influence the USNews.com rankings have on legal education and the decisions of applicants. But I was struck when having lunch this past Spring with some talented LLM students from Japan and China that they seemed to assume the…
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Judge Ho heading to Yale, at invitation of Dean Gerken

October 24, 2022

So reports the Blog Emperor. Judge Ho's threatened boycott sure seems to have gotten Yale's attention!
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Law professors on Twitter

October 19, 2022

Professor Bridget Crawford (Pace) has updated her "census" of lawprof Twitterati. And there's some discussion and comparison to prior years here. While Twitter use has increased, it still looks like a clear majority of law faculty avoid that dismal cyber-realm! (A few schools do seem to have a majority of faculty on Twitter: e.g., Arizona,…
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CFP for the conferences in honor of Joseph Raz…

October 18, 2022

…at King's College, London and Columbia Law School.
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Etchemendy on “Legal Realism and Legal Reality”

October 17, 2022

This is the best paper on legal realism to appear in a law review in many, many years. It's telling about the unreliability of the student-edited law reviews that a paper of this caliber should appear in the Tennessee Law Review (kudos to them for picking it up), while much weaker articles have appeared in…
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Yale Law Dean Gerken shares “message to alumni” on free expression at the law school

October 13, 2022

Here. This seems a victory for Judge Ho, despite the controversy about his threatened boycott. UPDATE: Correspondence with a colleague at Yale makes me realize an ambiguity in the preceding: what I thought was a "victory" for Judge Ho's proposed boycott was that Dean Gerken shared this message in public. Past criticisms from prominent YLS…
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Which judges are participating in the Yale law boycott?

October 11, 2022

A couple of readers have asked whether there is a list of the boycotters. The only two that appear to be public are Judge Ho of the 5th Circuit and Judge Branch of the 11th Circuit. One law professor who inquried about this explained: Since your blog is read by many law profs, I think…
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14 federal judges are now saying they will not hire Yale Law graduates

October 10, 2022

The Blog Emperor has details. I think Professor Kerr is correct that this is not appropriate, and I might add that it smacks of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, insofar as the judges are promising to punish students who choose Yale because they reject these judges' view of the free speech issues. The irony, of course, is…
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“Alf Ross’s Critique of American Legal Realism–and a Naturalistic Critique of Ross”

October 7, 2022

This draft paper (for a conference on Scandinaivan Legal Realism later this month at York) may interest some readers; the abstract: The new edition (by Jakob Holtermann and Uta Bindreiter) of Alf Ross’s seminal work ON LAW AND JUSTICE presents an opportunity to reevaluate Ross’s contribution to a naturalistic jurisprudence, as well as the relation…
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Descendants of Judge Hastings and alumni sue over proposed plan to drop “Hastings” name from the University of California College of Law in San Francisco

October 6, 2022

Story here. The primary cause of action appears to be breach of contract. If that's correct, then it's not clear why it is even relevant whether the allegations about the involvement of Judge Hastings in the murder of Native Americans is relevant (but I have not read the complaint).
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What is the difference between the Warren Court and the Roberts Court?

October 5, 2022

To read this, one might think it was that the latter, unlike the former, pursues partisan political objectives. By contrast, I would have thought the difference is that the former pursued worthy and valuable moral and political objectives, while the latter generally does not. See generally. It's often said "we're all realists now," but it's…
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Leading student-edited law reviews issue statement on new requirements for data and code transparency in empirical legal scholarship

October 4, 2022

Here. (Thanks to Andrew Granato for the pointer.)
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Judge Ho of the 5th Circuit calls on other judges to not hire Yale Law graduates…

October 3, 2022

…given the school's problems with free expression (that we have noted previously). Professor Kerr (Berkeley) makes the case against such a move.
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Lawsky’s (final) entry level hiring report for 2022

September 29, 2022

Here (earlier version). 118 tenure-track hires last year, at 75 schools! That's the highest number in a decade, although still short of the 150+ figure most years prior to the Great Recession.
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Florida lawyers take position in court that public university faculty curricula and classroom speech are “government speech,” so regulable by state

September 28, 2022

Those thinking about taking jobs in the Florida public university system will want to watch this case. If it makes it to SCOTUS, we may find out if Garcetti extends to faculty at public universities; if it does that will be the end of academic freedom at public universities.
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Some very odd behavior by student editors at the Iowa Law Review

September 27, 2022

Lawprof Ramsi Woodcock (Kentucky) reports his experience. Short version: he was late turning in the final version of his article, so the Law Review insisted they would publish the earlier version, over his objections! There are other twists and turns in this saga, but the student editors did not handle the situation properly. They can…
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USNews.com compared to other metrics of school quality

September 22, 2022

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 30, 2022 Here's the USNews.com "top ten", with other data on these schools. US News overall rank School Overall scholarly impact rank Scholarly impact rank for faculty under 60 SCOTUS “per capita” placement rank Academic reputation rank in US News Avg. rank across all metrics 1 Yale University 1 3…
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71 applicants in the 2nd FAR distribution from the AALS…

September 21, 2022

…compared to 39 last year. Probably the attention accorded to the astonishingly low number of applicants in the first distribution in August inspired a few latecomers to enter the market.
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Top 95 law faculty ranked by D-Index

September 21, 2022

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 8–ONE CORRECTION (Prof. Helfer [Duke] was not listed with Duke in the database). The earlier reference to a ranking of chemists in connection with my post about ranking of law faculty with Google Scholar pages by H-Index was a bit misleading: the ranking of chemists alluted to was by their…
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Visiting Professors at the top six law schools, 2022-23

September 20, 2022

I haven't run one of these in awhile; here are the "visiting professors" in doctrinal subjects (some are "look-see" visitors, others "podium," i.e., filling a teaching need) at the top six law schools, who also invite the most visitors. All are visiting from the law school of their home institutions, unless otherwise noted. Only those…
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“Feedburner” is defunct

September 15, 2022

For those who enjoy receiving blog posts delivered to your email account each day, I'm sorry to report that the service known as Feedburner has been discontinued by Google. As an alternative, you can use an RSS reader, and still subscribe to this blog via Feedly, NewsBlur, or Inoreader.
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In Memoriam: David Lieberman (1953-2022)

September 15, 2022

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 13–UPDATED A longtime member of the Jurisprudence & Social Policy faculty at Berkeley's law school, Professor Lieberman had only retired earlier this year. He was well-known for his contributions to legal history, especially the intellectual history of legal theory. There is more at the Legal History Blog from legal historian…
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Changes in federal clerkship placement at 8 leading law schools, 2013-2020

September 14, 2022

I only recently came across this interesting data via Derek Muller (Iowa).
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In Memoriam: Michael L. Wachter (1943-2022)

September 12, 2022

A longtime member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty, where he was emeritus, Professor Wachter was well-known for his contributions to labor law and economics and, more recently, corporate law scholarship. The Penn memorial notice is here. (Thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer.)
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Blast from the past: John Yoo and academic freedom

September 7, 2022

Back in 2008. The general points about academic freedom certainly remain relevant.
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On Deaning while stuttering

September 1, 2022

Interesting, endearing, and very personal reflections from the Blog Emperor himself.
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Michigan lawprof sues university, law school, and Dean West…

August 31, 2022

…for discrimination on the basis of race, gender, disability, and family status. Some of the allegations about discriminatory conduct are very vague and conclusory, and hard to assess; others are quite specific, such as about deviations from an allegedly lockstep salary structure to the disadvantage of plaintiff, and allegations about shockingly inappropriate emails sent by…
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Should the ABA eliminate a required admissions test (like the LSAT) for law school admission?

August 29, 2022

Dean Kevin Washburn (Iowa) makes an interesting case for keeping the test.
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Where did aspiring law teachers in the first FAR graduate law school? (And why are there so few candidates in the first FAR?)

August 26, 2022

MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM AUGUST 22–MANY INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME The AALS has implemented a better search engine, which allows one to identify where candidates received their JD (thus excluding LLM and SJD graduates from the picture, which makes for a cleaner comparison between schools). Here is the distribution in the first FAR for…
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In Memoriam: Sherry Colb (1966-2022)

August 25, 2022

I'm very sorry to report the untimely passing of Professor Sherry Colb, a longtime member of the Cornell Law faculty, who wrote widely on criminal procedure, evidence, feminist jurisprudence, and animal rights, among other areas. There is a memorial notice from her husband, the law professor Michael Dorf, here. UPDATE: An here's a nice example…
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Chicago alumni and fellows on the law teaching market, 2022-23

August 25, 2022

MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUGUST 18 This post is strictly for schools that expect to do hiring this year. In order to protect the privacy of our candidates, please e-mail me to get a copy of the narrative profiles of our candidates, including hyperlinks to their homepages. All these candidates are in the first FAR…
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Acadmic Freedom Alliance calls for an end to the use of mandatory “diversity” statements in hiring and promotion…

August 23, 2022

…as a violation of academic freedom. (Randall Kennedy [Harvard] was one of the drafters of the AFA statement.) We discussed this issue previously in connection with some related ABA proposals, as well as the recent AALS decision to encourage applicants to submit diversity statements.
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The first FAR is out…

August 18, 2022

…and there are only 272 applicants for law teaching positions! Since this year is, I expect, going to have even more schools searching than last year, this will be a great year to be a job seeker. I do wonder whether the second FAR distribution won't have more resumes than usual. 272 is very low.…
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Canadian judges covering for other Canadian judge excorciated

August 18, 2022

Leslie Green (emeritus, Queen's & Oxford) comments. (Earlier coverage here and here.)
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Law professors ranked by h-index (Google Scholar) (CORRECTED)

August 17, 2022

MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 1–CORRECTED (three errors of omission from the first version: Bernard Black, Martha Fineman, and Nuno Garoupa) I recently came across a ranking of 1,000 living chemists (link fixed) based on something like their h-index ("The h-index, or Hirsch index, measures the impact of a particular scientist rather than a…
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Japanese “comfort women” and the North Korean connection

August 12, 2022

The discussion continues. The long abstract gives a good overview of the argument. (Earlier coverage here and here.)
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The AALS springs another surprise on job seekers

August 11, 2022

The first round FAR forms were due yesterday. The AALS has continued its tradition of springing surprises on job seekers. The last two years the surprise was, first, abandoning the old FAR form, and then, the next year, reinstating it, with some minor modifications (most notably, eliminating the secondary list of teaching interests). This year's…
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