Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

News and views about law school and law

  • “Wave of departures” from Yale Law School Imminent?

    A professor at Yale Law School writes: Yale Law School may experience a wave of departures.  [James] Whitman’s going to New York (NYU or Columbia), [Alec] Stone Sweet is flirting with Columbia and Stanford, Kenji Yoshino will follow Whitman to one or the other, [Reva] Siegel and [Robert] Post are visitng at Harvard and one…

    Read more

  • “The Future of Legal Scholarship” in the Era of Blogs and the Internet

    Two more essays from the Yale Law Journal Pocket Part symposium are now on-line:  Rosa Brooks writes about "What the Internet Age Means for Female Scholars" and I write about "Why Blogs Are Bad for Legal Scholarship."  (Rosa and I are so predictable!)  I don’t know if either of us are right, but I suspect…

    Read more

  • SSRN Downloads, Once Again…and Some More Skeptical Thoughts

    So the new updated SSRN download data is on-line.  There is so much wrong with the aggregate download data, it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with something that obviously catches my eye.  Texas now ranks 2nd (behind Harvard) for the most downloads in the last 12 months.  Of the 28,000 downloads,…

    Read more

  • UC Irvine Still in the Running for a 5th UC Law School

    From the Chancellor of UC Irvine: Contrary to recent reports in the media, the University of California, Irvine’s proposal to establish a School of Law is actively under consideration by the University of California. On Wednesday, Sept. 20, I will give an informational presentation and answer questions on the law school at the UC Board…

    Read more

  • “U.S. News Law School Rankings Are Bogus”

    Yes, they are.  (Though, I must note, the "2007 Educational Quality Rankings" this fellow cites don’t exist.  But that’s minor.) UPDATE:  In response to a reader query:  citing the absurd Cooley/Brennan rankings doesn’t help the cause either, but it also doesn’t change the fact that Hastings is badly screwed by U.S. News.

    Read more

  • Is David Luban Being Serious?

    I almost fell out of my chair when I read this: Comparing the quality of articles in the top student-edited law reviews with the quality of articles in the top peer-reviewed philosophy journals (my own scholarly point of reference), I have never been able to detect superiority in the peer-reviewed philosophy journals. By and large,…

    Read more

  • Nevada Dean Morgan to Retire at End of Academic Year

    Richard Morgan, the Dean of the Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for the last ten years, has announced that he will retire from the Deanship and the faculty on June 30, 2007.  Dean Morgan led the new Boyd School to ABA accreditation and membership in the Association of…

    Read more

  • Interviews with Leading Moral, Political, & Legal Philosophers

    Some law professors may enjoy this new series of books of interviews with leading moral, political, and legal philosophers.  (Other volumes are devoted to some fairly technical branches of philosophy, though the one on game theory may also interest some legal scholars.)  The volume of interviews with political philosophers already has some interesting excerpts on-line…

    Read more

  • Trends in Curricular Reform?

    A faculty member writes: As a loyal blog reader and the lucky soul speaking at our faculty retreat on what other law schools are doing in curricular reform these days, I was wondering if you have heard any rumblings from Texas or elsewhere. We have looked at general trends and what specific institutions are doing…

    Read more

  • Around the Law Blogs One More Time

    Althouse v. Feminist Bloggers, round two.  (Thanks to Ann Bartow for the pointer, who weighs in here.) This blogger also comments on Professor Althouse’s latest tangle with feminists, though in an unecessarily sexist way.  "Jackass" would surely suffice.  (Professor Althouse’s target has a different epithet in mind, which I won’t reprint out of respect for…

    Read more

  • Sextonism Watch: Chapman University Law School

    Joe Hodnicki has the extraordinary details of how Chapman bested Harvard in a "key scholarly putput" ranking.  Sextonism may be laughable, but it usually isn’t quite this corrupt. UPDATE:  Tom Bell (Chapman) defends his school.  I am  not persuaded, but invite readers to draw their own conclusions.  (I do agree, though, with Professor Bell that…

    Read more

  • Sorry for the Paucity of Postings…

    …of late, but I have to deliver the manuscript for this book imminently (by tomorrow).  I will have a Sextonism Watch item tomorrow, and a bit more, I expect, next week.

    Read more

  • Laudan on “Truth, Error, and Criminal Law”

    I don’t ordinarily plug books, even those of my colleagues, but I want to make an exception for this unusually important work.  Many law professors may not, quite reasonably, know who Larry Laudan is.  Laudan is a philosopher of science–concerned, often, with the epistemology of proof and evidence in the sciences–who is, uncontroversially, one of…

    Read more

  • September 11, 2001 in Austin, Texas

    I have thought for some time it might be interesting–at least for me, perhaps for others, perhaps in time for my children–to record my recollections of that fateful day in a place far removed–and yet oddly connected–to the horrors that were visited upon tens of thousands of people in the Northeastern United States.  I shall…

    Read more

  • For Chicago Law Students Interested in my Jurisprudence Seminar

    On the off chance that some Chicago students visit this blog:  I appreciate the strong interest in the Jurisprudence seminar, and I plan to increase the size of the seminar significantly (at least 50%) in order to accomodate some of the students on the waitlist.  Please be there the first day if you remain interested…

    Read more

  • Two Law Professors on Living with “Chronic Pain”

    Interesting reflections by Paul Horwitz (Southwestern) and William Stuntz (Harvard).  (The Stuntz piece is subscription access only [from The New Republic], but Professor Horwitz summarizes some of Professor Stuntz’s main themes.)

    Read more

  • The Future for Philosophy is Here…

    …in paperback.  And the Spring will bring the truth, at last, about Nietzsche and Morality.

    Read more

  • New Blog on “National Security Law”

    Here.  This is certainly an important and timely topic, though I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the contributors, so have no idea whether this blog will meet the need for incisive and critical commentary on these issues.  Hopefully, it will.

    Read more

  • Dershowitz’s Obsession with Chomsky

    Chomsky’s plausible explanation for Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz’s obsession is here: Dershowitz readers will be aware that whenever his sensitive antennae pick up a phrase that might be critical of Israeli government policies, if my name is even remotely associated, it quickly becomes the “hard left gang of Israel bashers” led by the…

    Read more

  • “Future of Legal Scholarship” in the Era of the Internet and Blogs

    A symposium in the Yale Law Journal’s "Pocket Part."  The skeptical view is coming soon…

    Read more

  • Forget Manure, Try Federal Reporters

    Details here.

    Read more

  • Top 20 Law Schools by Size of Endowement (based on data from 2000)

    Someone recently supplied me this slightly dated information (from the year 2000) about law school endowments.  The numbers would no doubt be higher today in most instances, though the relative ranking might not be that changed (an exception would be UVA, which would be higher in most instances now I suspect). Three sets of figures…

    Read more

  • Howard Bashman, Nonpartisan?

    I really don’t follow Mr. Bashman’s blog that closely, but I was surprised to read this article in the New York Times which described his blog as "non-partisan."  While it is true that he largely links to news and related items about appellate litigations, I would have thought it obvious (from my occasional visits to…

    Read more

  • This Should Help Michigan in the US News Rankings

    Based on expenditures alone…

    Read more

  • Law School Faculty Quality: Who is Up and Who is Down Since 2003

    MOVING TO FRONT from July 18 for benefit of readers who missed it during the summer We ran our last reputational surveys of leading legal scholars in the Spring of 2003; I hope to run a new one in Spring 2007, since some perhaps meaningful changes have taken place in faculty rosters in the interim. …

    Read more

  • Law Blog Headlines…

    …are available at this useful site.

    Read more

  • Supreme Court Clerkship Placement 1996 through 2006 Terms

    Here.  From the introduction: Earlier studies of Supreme Court Clerkship placement covered a longer period of time (1991-2005); this study covers the past decade, and so permits some sense of which schools are increasing their success at securing Supreme Court clerkships for their best graduates, and which are having less success. NYU, Notre Dame, and…

    Read more

  • Visiting Professors, 2006-07

    MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 10 (with a couple of corrections, but mostly so those who missed it during the summer might see it) Below are listed visiting professors at the top six law schools by almost all measures of faculty quality–which are the schools that also typically have the most visiting professors on a…

    Read more

  • What Factors Hurt a Teaching Candidate’s Prospects?

    A law professor writes: In the spirit of your post on factors that count most (in favor) of a candidate, it might be time to talk about what will hurt a candidate most.  And I think one of those is being from a “lesser” school in the same geographic market.  I’ve seen a number of…

    Read more

  • From Legal Realism to Naturalized Jurisprudence

    I’ve posted the penultimate draft of the introduction to my collection of papers on Naturalizing Jurisprudence:  Essays on American Legal Realism and Naturalism in Legal Philosophy, which Oxford University Press will publish (simultaneously in both cloth and paper, happily) in 2007 (during the Spring, I hope).  The introduction, "From Legal Realism to Naturalized Jurisprudence," gives…

    Read more

  • “Originalism Redux” Redux (with a reply to Solum)

    I notice that several of the law blogs are busy talking about "originalism" again.  Accordingly, I thought it might be timely to remind folks that originalism, the reigning pathology of American constitutional law, is the theory of constitutional interpretation without any theoretical justification.  I am confident that this little problem will not dissuade any of…

    Read more

  • What Advice for Student Bloggers Starting Law School?

    A Pitt law professor seeks ideas.

    Read more

  • SSRN Downloads for Non-US Scholars

    Thom Brooks (Newcastle) reports the numbers.

    Read more

  • Lateral Moves During the Past Year

    Dan Filler (Drexel) has updated, once again, his more comprehensive listing here.

    Read more

  • Faculty Appointments Chairs for 2006-07: Make Yourself Known!

    MOVING TO FRONT from August 2 to encourage more responses–this is a useful resource for teaching candidates! ============================= MOVING TO FRONT from July 19 to encourage more responses ============================= Prawfsblog collects the info.

    Read more

  • 11 Canadian Universities Decline to Participate in Canadian Version of U.S. News Rankings

    MOVING TO FRONT FROM AUG. 14, SINCE THERE IS NOW A LIVELY COMMENTS SECTION. Story here; an excerpt: Eleven Canadian universities advised Maclean’s magazine on Monday that they will not participate in this year’s survey that assigns rankings to each institution because of concerns about the methodology and the validity of some of the measures.…

    Read more

  • Anyone Have a Car in Chicago I Might “Rent”?

    As many readers know, I’m going to be at the University of Chicago in the fall.  Driving from Austin is more hassle than it’s worth, so I am wondering whether any readers in the Chicago area who might be on leave themselves in the fall, or who have an extra car, would be willing to…

    Read more

  • Guide to Public Interest Opportunities at U.S. Law Schools

    Here.

    Read more

  • Rookie Faculty Hiring: Which Factors Matter Most?

    Daniel Solove (GW) has initiated a discussion of this topic here.  Personally, I give most weight to the references (if they are from reliable people) and the quality of any writing the candidate has done.  Later on, the job talk can be useful for assessing likely classroom performance, and sometimes for assessing intellectual ability (though…

    Read more

  • Tom Bell: Some Recommended Reforms for US News

    Here; an excerpt: Earlier this summer, I began a series of posts about the U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings. (Please see below for links to each post in the series.) My research uncovered many interesting and troubling things about the rankings. I discovered errors in the data that USN&WR used for the…

    Read more

Subscribe via email

RSS Feed

Instagram

Tumblr

Categories

Archive

Designed with WordPress