Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

News and views about law school and law

  • On Ann Althouse

    This philosophy graduate student is not, it appears, a fan of her blog. 

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  • Solum’s Entry-Level Hiring Report

    Your last chance to contribute until the end of summer is now.  We’ll be using this data to supplement data my RA collected about tenure-track faculty at the top fifty law schools during 2005-06, in order to see which schools place the most graduates at the best schools.  The top five (in order) won’t be…

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  • A Fairness Issue in How Law Schools Award Merit Aid

    Brian Tamanaha (St. John’s) raises an interesting and very real issue: The economic value of a law degree for graduates from elite law schools, and for top students from non-elite law schools, would seem to handily justify the [tuition] price. A law degree for these favored individuals is a ticket to $130,000+ starting salaries in…

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  • O’Rourke Named Dean at BU

    Maureen O’Rourke (intellectual property), Interim Dean at Boston University School of Law, has been named Dean.  The university press release is here.  (The reference at the end to my law school ranking is, shall we say, a bit misleading…but so it goes in press releases!)  O’Rourke was a finalist in our Dean Search, and was…

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  • St. Mary’s Juarez to be the New Dean at Denver

    Here is the university’s announcement (not yet on-line): Jose Roberto (Beto) Juarez Jr. will join the University on July 1st as dean of the Sturm College of Law. An accomplished scholar, lawyer and administrator, he is currently a law professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio. Beto has been at St.…

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  • Sager Named New Dean of University of Texas School of Law

    It gives me great pleasure to announce that my esteemed colleague and friend Lawrence Sager (constitutional law, jurisprudence), who joined us in 2002 from NYU, has been named the new Dean of the Law School here at UT Austin.  The university press release is here.  Most readers will probably know some bits of his scholarly…

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  • Another Lateral for Minnesota: Chantal Thomas from Fordham

    Chantal Thomas (international trade, international law) at Fordham Law School has accepted a senior offer from the University of Minnesota Law School.  Minnesota has had a busy year!

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  • Texas Dean Search

    Various correspondents have  inquired about our Dean Search here at UT.  I can report that the Search Committee has sent the names of the finalists to the President and Provost, and I am hopeful there will be an official announcement soon.

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  • Limitations of Citation Studies

    Informative article here.

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  • Eugene Volokh Fan Club Loses Another Member

    Here.  Admittedly, the club rosters may have been thinning since last year’s odd defense of the idea that gays "convert" nice straight folks, or his rush of enthusiasm for torture.  Also see the apt comments by Ann Bartow (South Carolina).  Very odd.

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  • More Fun with SSRN…the May Stats are In

    Here’s what everyone (or no one, as the case may be) has been waiting for:  the updated SSRN download stats for the start of May.  The ten most downloaded authors in the last 12 months were: 1.  Lucian Bebchuk (Harvard; corporate) (14,621) 2.  Bernard Black (Texas; corporate) (10,771) 3.  Stephen Bainbridge (UCLA; corporate) (8,986) 4. …

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  • Another Lateral Hire for Michigan: James Hines, Jr.

    James Hines, Jr., an expert on international taxation previously on the Business School faculty at Michigan, will now hold a joint appointment with the Law School and Economics Department there.  Professor Hines also had senior offers from Harvard Law School and from Oxford.   This appears to conclude what must surely be the busiest and most…

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  • Political and Legal Philosopher Waldron Declines Harvard Law School Offer

    Case in point.  Very funny. Jeremy Waldron (political and legal philosophy), whose move from Columbia to NYU we noted a few weeks ago, has now officially declined the outstanding senior offer he had from Harvard Law School.

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  • Cornell’s Simson Named New Dean at Case Western

    Gary Simson, an expert on constitutional law at Cornell University, has been appointed the new Dean of the law school at Case Western Reserve University.

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  • “Blogs as Scholarship” Conference at Harvard

    Various colleagues and readers have asked why I’m not participating in this conference at HLS.  Paul Caron kindly invited me, and while I thought at first I’d do it, I decided in the end that I was too busy and that I didn’t really want to attend a conference on what strikes me as a…

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  • Defense Department Monitoring Law School Activities! NYU Dean Speaks Out

    Dean Richard Revesz has issued the following strong statement regarding the unbelievable Defense Department surveillance of Law School activities, including at NYU: Recently released documents from the U.S. Department of Defense confirm prior media reports that, in the name of investigating terrorist threats, government agencies have monitored activities at law schools throughout the country, including…

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  • Three Finalists in Denver Dean Search

    They are:  Dean Martin Belsky from the University of Tulsa; Jim Chen from the University of Minnesota; and Jose Roberto (Beto) Juarez from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio.

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  • Jane Jacobs

    Cass Sunstein has a nice, short item about why her work is interesting for lawyers.

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  • A Former Duke Law Prof on Why He Gave Up his Green Card

    Michael Byers, an expert in international law, holder of a Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, and previously a law professor at Duke, wrote the following interesting opinion piece in a Toronto newspaper: ”This is the first time I’ve met someone who wanted to do that.“ The U.S. immigration officer’s southern drawl,…

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  • Villanova’s Anderson to be New CUNY Dean

    Michelle Anderson (criminal law, family law, feminist legal theory) at Villanova Law School will be the new Dean of the City University of New York School of Law, located at Queens College.  The CUNY press release is here.

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  • USC Dean Search

    The finalists for the Deanship at the University of Southern California, I have heard from a colleague in Los Angeles, are:  Alexander Capron (USC), Jody Kraus (Virginia), Carrie Menkel-Meadow (Georgetown), and David Wippman (Cornell).  Kraus and Wippman are also finalists here at Texas.

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  • Columbia Student Paper Article on Law School Faculty Losses

    This is an odd piece, and I wonder about its accuracy (and not only because it’s obviously silly to describe Ronald Dworkin as "the world’s foremost legal philosopher"). UPDATE:  A reader writes, "Who is the world’s foremost legal philosopher then?"  I would think the uncontroversial answer is Joseph Raz, though, for obvious reasons, Dworkin has…

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  • Baylor Law Dean Closes Law Library for Son’s Prom Dinner, Disrupting Students Preparing for Finals

    Wow!

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  • New Law Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

    The following law professors have been elected as Fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences:  Ian Ayres (Yale), Richard Fallon (Harvard), Larry Kramer (Stanford), and Lawrence Lessig (Stanford).  Several practitioners were also elected, including the new Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., and Seth Waxman, now practicing with Wilmer, Cutler in Washington, D.C.  In…

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  • Duke Law Dean Bartlett to Step Down in 2007

    Katharine Bartlett, Dean of the Duke University School of Law since 2000, will step down at the end of the 2006-07 academic year to return to the faculty.  Dean Bartlett gets credit for bringing about a significant improvement in the quality of the faculty during her tenure, as long-time observers will know.  Our 2003 survey…

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  • Evaluating and Comparing Law Libraries

    A request for ideas about relevant criteria here:  law librarians and those knowledgeable about questions of institutional assessment and rankings should weigh in in the comments section.

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  • Two Senior Hires for Texas: Rodriguez from San Diego, Sage from Columbia

    The University of Texas School of Law has made two major senior hires:  Daniel Rodriguez (positive political theory, administrative law)–formerly Dean of the University of San Diego School of Law and, before that, a professor for a decade at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley–has turned down offers from…

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  • High Undergraduate GPAs at Top Law Schools: What Do They Mean and What Are Their Consequences for Legal Education?

    Pamela Karlan, a distinguished expert on voting rights and civil procedure at Stanford Law School, writes: I read, with both interest and a fair amount of distress, the 75th percentile LSAT rankings.  The distress came from seeing the staggering 75th percentile GPAs. These could reflect at least three states of the world, two of them…

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  • Now the Entire Nation Can Help Choose the New Dean of North Carolina

    A colleague elsewhere alerts me to the fact that you too can now evaluate the performance of the UNC Dean candidates thanks to the miracles of modern technology.  I confess to not have listened to any of the candidates’ presentations yet–we have enough here in Austin to watch right now, even though they’re not on…

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  • Brian Leiter

    Here and here.  For the benefit of all the readers who complain that Internet searches don’t turn up this blog quickly enough…

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  • New Ranking of Law Schools by 75th Percentile LSAT Scores

    Here.  Do read the introductory remarks and caveats before looking at the ranking itself. UPDATE:  Joe Hodnicki compares the 2005 and 2006 results here.

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  • Houston Law Dean Rapoport Resigns

    Nancy Rapoport, Dean of the University of Houston Law Center for the last six years, will step down at the end of this year.  Houston has had the second strongest law faculty in the state for a number of years now, though it is often over-shadowed (for familiar reasons) in the U.S. News rankings by…

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  • Socio-Economic Diversity?

    A staff member at a top law school writes: I currently work at a top ten law school (US News Rankings) and have been a bit shocked about the general type of students that are admitted. Despite all of the focus on diversity, it seems that there is a great deal of homogeneity among the…

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  • Roithmayr from Illinois to USC

    Daria Roithmayr (Critical Race Theory) at the University of Illinois College of Law has accepted a senior offer from the law school at the University of Southern California.

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  • From the Bowels of Cyberspace Again

    I am no longer surprised, but continually amused, at the misinformation that circulates in Cyberspace, misinformation posted with complete confidence by (almost always) anonymous posters.  A student e-mailed me the other day to ask about this item: [Leiter] rails against the "T14" as an arbitrary concept with no grounding in reality, yet when he talks…

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  • Minnesota Law Dean to Step Down at End of Academic Year

    Alex Johnson, Jr., Dean of the University of Minnesota Law School since 2002, will step down at the end of this academic year.  Looks like Minnesota will be undertaking a Dean search during 2006-07.

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  • The “Over-Hyped Law School Press Release of the Year”?

    A colleague elsewhere sent a link to this under the heading, above.  The title of the press release from the Thomas M. Cooley Law School conveys the flavor:  "Cooley’s Astounding Record-Breaking Pace Continues."  Astounding, indeed.

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  • UNC Dean Search Redux–and the Texas Dean Search

    MOVING TO THE FRONT FROM APRIL 12 IN LIGHT OF CORRECTION, BELOW. The new candidates are Jack Boger, a UNC faculty member and alumnus; Maureen O’Rourke, Interim Dean at Boston University; Rex Perschbacher, Dean at UC Davis; and Kenneth Randall, Dean at Alabama.  O’Rourke is also a finalist in the Texas Dean Search, as are…

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  • World’s Fastest Article Rejection by a Law Review

    One of our alums in law teaching, Christopher Fairman (Ohio State), reports that the Kansas Law Review, which prides itself on promptness, rejected this article of his only 25 minutes after he submitted it!  It seems they read the title.  Who knew the Kansans were so sensitive?

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  • Gerken from Harvard to Yale

    Heather Gerken, a specialist in voting rights and election law at Harvard Law School, has accepted a senior offer from Yale Law School.  Quite apart from Professor Gerken’s merits, this is notable in two other ways:  first, there is rarely movement between Yale and Harvard; and second, when there has been movement in recent decades,…

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