Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

News and views about law school and law

  • 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…

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  • This Should Help Michigan in the US News Rankings

    Based on expenditures alone…

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  • 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. …

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  • Law Blog Headlines…

    …are available at this useful site.

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • “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…

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  • What Advice for Student Bloggers Starting Law School?

    A Pitt law professor seeks ideas.

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  • SSRN Downloads for Non-US Scholars

    Thom Brooks (Newcastle) reports the numbers.

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  • Lateral Moves During the Past Year

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

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  • 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.

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  • 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.…

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  • 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…

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

    Here.

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • Hiring Practices, Voting Rules, and Delegation of Authority at Law Schools

    A law professor writes: I am the new chairman of my school’s hiring committee and would find benchmarking on several issues helpful.    Here are my questions: 1.    Is the selection ever delegated to a committee?  If so, why?2.    Which categories of faculty do not vote on hiring decisions?  LR&W? Clinical?3.    With…

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  • Lempert on “Empirical Legal Studies”

    Richard Lempert (Michigan) has apt comments here; an excerpt: I have concerns about the quality of some of the empirical work being done and how empirical work, even good scholarship, is used.  To put it bluntly too much empirical scholarship is being deployed normatively, downplaying caveats that should be attached to findings, and some research,…

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  • The “Socratic Method”: The Scandal of American Legal Education

    With a new school year soon upon us, it might be timely to revisit this topic.

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  • From the Annals of Global Warming

    A law professor in Ottawa (Canada) writes: Today, in the world’s second coldest capital (Moscow is warmer but Ulan Bator, Mongolia is apparently slightly colder) it was 117 F with humidity. I think there won’t be much left of humanity by 2075. Or sooner if the Republicans get re-elected. Hotter in Ottawa, Canada than in…

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  • Voiceless No More!

    Andrew Chin (North Carolina), that is. Will there come a point when every law professor in America has a blog?   Every law student too?

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  • Submitting to Law Reviews

    Daniel Solove and Scott Moss have put together useful information here and here.

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  • Religious Reasons and State Power

    Against my better judgment–but since folks have been e-mailing me their comments in this debate–I’m going to say something about the rather unsatisfying discussion going on at several law-related blogs prompted by Geoffrey Stone’s comments about President Bush’s veto of funding for stem cell research.  Professor Stone wrote: In vetoing the bill that would have…

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  • USC’s Dudziak Wins ACLS Fellowship

    The legal historian Mary Dudziak at the University of Southern California Law School was the only law professor to win a Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies for 2006.  The ACLS will support her project on "Exporting American Dreams:  Thurgood Marshall and the Constitution of Kenya."

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  • Alito Clerks for 2006 Term?

    I know that Justice Alito has at least two clerks for the 2006 term lined up:  Mike Lee (BYU ’97) and Chris Paolella (Harvard ’99).  Does anyone know who his other two clerks are, and where they went to law school?  You can either e-mail me or post that information below (preferably with a source). …

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  • Some Realism about the U.S. Supreme Court

    Nicely put by Judge Posner: The supreme court is a political court. The discretion that the justices exercise can fairly be described as legislative in character, but the conditions under which this "legislature" operates are different from those of Congress. Lacking electoral legitimacy, yet wielding Zeus’s thunderbolt in the form of the power to invalidate…

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  • Some New Law Blogs

    Everything you wanted to know about credit and bankruptcy here. Everything you wanted to  know about "the interplay between legal responses to exogenous change and the law’s own endogenous capacity for adaptation" here.

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  • Is There a Correlation Between Scholarly and Teaching Success?

    No.  Of course, there are questions (to put it mildly) about the measure of teaching success.  But this is an interesting piece of work.

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  • Sextonism Watch: Wake Forest University

    At least this bit of wild hyperbole was internal puffery, but here it is (thanks to an anonymous informant): Robert K. Walsh, dean of the Wake Forest University School of Law, announced recently that he plans to retire as dean next summer. Walsh, who will complete 18 years as dean in 2007, will remain at…

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  • Osgoode’s McCamus Elected to Royal Society of Canada

    John McCamus, an internationally recognized authority on the law of restitution at Osgoode Hall School of Law of York University, Toronto, was the only legal scholar elected to the Royal Society of Canada this year.  Details here. 

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  • Faculty Uprising at Michigan State

    Moving to the front from Sunday:  see the latest update, below. They want the Dean out (and more details here). UPDATE:  An informed observer from another law school suggests to me that the "uprising" may have more to do with senior faculty from the Detroit College of Law days resisting the academic turn of the…

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  • Love and Fun are not “things of value” in Illinois

    An associate at a Chicago law firm writes with the following amusing observations about a peculiarity of Illinois law: The definition of prostitution or the nature of the proscribed conduct varies with the governing law of the jurisdiction where it is unlawful. In Illinois, the definition is. Any person who performs, offers or agrees to…

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  • Not much real news in the dog days of summer…

    …so time for more fun with SSRN downloads, from the July stats. The top 20 law schools with the most downloads in the last 12 months (total # of downloads): 1.  Harvard Law School (42,319) 2.  Columbia Law School (30,156) 3.  University of Chicago Law School (29,253) 4.  University of Texas School of Law (28,914)…

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  • Why so few female Supreme Court clerks?

    Tom Smith (San Diego) makes some sensible (and characteristically amusing) points; an excerpt: The assumption behind the question is, in my limited experience, if not false, at least unproven.  That is, that the smartest law students go on to be Supreme Court clerks.  That is rather like saying the smartest politicians go on to be…

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  • Who is America’s Worst Law Professor?

    This weighty matter is debated here.

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  • The Final Tolling of (Tom) Bell for the University of Florida

    Here.

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  • On-Line Bullying and Defamation by Law Students

    Interesting post on this subject here.  The author focuses mostly on harassment and "bullying" of students on blogs, though the issue is at least as serious in on-line "chat" rooms.  One putatively prelaw discussion board–memorably described in the comments here as the place where "the amount of racism, anti-semitism, and extreme aggression borders on psychotic"…

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  • Georgetown Faculty Blog

    First Chicago, now Georgetown (which includes Mark Tushnet, though he’s departed for Harvard).  Is this a trend?  If all law schools set one up, and include stat counters, then we cank rank law schools by the number of visits to their blog…which is likely to be as meaningful as ranking by SSRN downloads.

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