Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

News and views about law school and law

  • Mitchell from Florida State to Virginia

    Gregory Mitchell (behavioral law and economics) at Florida State University has accepted a tenured offer from the University of Virginia. 

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  • Michigan Makes Bid for IP Expert Litman at Wayne State

    Fifteen years after turning down Jessica Litman for tenure, the University of Michigan Law School has now made her a tenured offer.  In the interim, Professor Litman has taught law at Wayne State University, and become recognized as a leading expert on copyright law and other aspects of intellectual property. UPDATE:   Professor Litman has accepted…

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  • Vanderbilt Appoints Law & Economics Scholars Viscusi & Hersch

    W. Kip Viscusi (law and economics, torts, products liability), who Directs the Empirical Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School and may be best-known outside the academy for his work on behalf of the tobacco companies in the smoking litigation, and his wife Joni Hersch, who is currently an adjunct professor at Harvard (and was…

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  • University of Oregon Won’t Defend Law Prof Threatened with Legal Action for Her Scholarship

    The story is here; an excerpt: When Merle H. Weiner was hired as a law professor at the University of Oregon, she was told that one of her duties was to write articles and books — and she did just that, publishing extensively on her areas of expertise, one of which is domestic violence. But…

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  • “How to Rank Law Schools”

    My contribution to the Indiana Law Journal symposium, "How to Rank Law Schools," has been put on-line at SSRN by the student editors, and can be downloaded here.  I generally don’t put fluff on SSRN, but since the editors have placed it there…

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  • U of Toronto Law Faculty Names Internal Dean

    The University of Toronto Faculty of Law has chosen Mayo Moran, currently an Associate Professor there, as its new Dean.  The University news item is here.  I’m afraid Professor Moran is unknown to me, so I’ve no idea what the significance of this appointment is.  Comments are open, if anyone has insight.

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  • Are the Most Cited Law Reviews Those of the Most Highly Ranked Law Schools?

    Al Brophy (Law, Alabama) has thoughts and data.

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  • Indiana-Indianapolis Law Prof Bradford Resigns

    Story here.  I had earlier reported on academic freedom issues involving Professor Bradford, though this latest turn of events does make me wonder about these allegations and whether they really had merit.

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  • Texas Wesleyan Dean Slabach to Step Down at End of Academic Year

    Dean Slabach’s letter to the Texas Wesleyan community is here.  At least judging by faculty hires, Dean Slabach served Texas Wesleyan well.

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  • UT Austin Law Dean Powers Named President of the University

    It’s now official.  Bill Powers, Dean extraordinaire of the UT Law School, will be the next President of the University of Texas at Austin, come February 1.  I have written previously about what an outstanding Dean he has been, so it makes me sorry, indeed, to lose him in the law school, though very glad…

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  • Another “No” to Harvard: Tax laywer Weisbach to Stay at Chicago

    Leading young tax lawyer David Weisbach at the University of Chicago Law School has turned down the tenured offer from Harvard Law School.

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  • Legal Historian Witt Turns Down Harvard, To Remain at Columbia

    Legal historian John Witt at Columbia Law School has turned down the tenured offer from Harvard Law School. 

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  • More Thoughts on Empirical Legal Studies

    Mark Graber (Political Science, Maryland) has some wise words of caution about the current enthusiasm for "empirical legal studies."  While there has been a lot of first-rate empirical work done by legal scholars over the past half-century, my own impression (mostly from the appointments process) is that too much of the current work that attaches…

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  • Harvard’s Michelman Receives APS Phillips Prize

    Constitutional theorist Frank Michelman at Harvard Law School has received the Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence from the American Philosophical Society, the nation’s oldest learned society.  The HLS press release is here.  Previous recipients have included Bruce Ackerman, Joel Feinberg, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Louis Henkin, Karl Llewellyn, Lon Fuller, and Willard Hurst.  (As the list…

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  • First Annual Conferenceon Empirical Legal Studies

    I don’t generally do conference announcements, but this one is both "close to home" and likely to be of interest to many: First Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies University of Texas Law School 27-28 October 2006 Announcement & Call for Papers (Submission Deadline:  June 30, 2006) The inaugural Empirical Legal Studies Conference will be…

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  • Advice on “Fly-Back” Interviews at Law Schools

    A colleague elsewhere writes with some useful (and timely) advice for those seeking law teaching jobs: One subject on which there is relatively little advice out there (compared to the meat market and most relevant qualifications) is the flyback interview.  I’ve seen a good number of candidates come through my school now, and it seems…

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  • Finding Academic Jobs as a Couple

    A student at a law school that produces a lot of law teachers writes: I have been doing searches on your blog to address the question of how should an aspiring academic couple proceed through the academic market.  I recognize that these answers very much depend on the school, but if you could provide a…

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  • The classroom of the future

    Stephen Bainbridge (Law, UCLA) has the amusing details.

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  • Transfer to “Top Five” Law School to Get Into Teaching?

    A law student writes: I am currently a 1L at [a top ten law school by just about all measures], and I think that I’m interested in pursuing a career in teaching.  The blogs I’ve read on seeking a job in academics suggest that it’s preferable to go to a top 5 school. If I’m…

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  • Another Blogging First: Harvard Law School Has an Admissions Blog

    Here.

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  • A New Hiring Tactic: Reader Reaction Sought

    After last weeke’s "faculty recruitment conference" for new law teachers (otherwise known as the "meat market"), there has been much talk about a new recruitment tactic by Northwestern, described to me by colleagues at Illinois and Texas as follows:  Northwestern offers to fly back a "hot" candidate prior to the "meat market" on the condition…

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  • Political Philosopher Cohen from MIT to Stanford

    The distinguished political philosopher Joshua Cohen, a longtime member of the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology, has accepted a senior offer from Stanford University, where he wiil be half-time in Political Science, and one-quarter each in Law and Philosophy, as well as direct a new Center for Global…

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  • One Lawyer’s Experience with Judge Alito

    Some readers may find this account of interest.

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  • The tail wags the dog

    This may be the clearest case I’ve ever seen of a law school setting its academic and institutional policy with an eye to the U.S. News rankings. (Thanks to Craig Linton for the pointer.) UPDATE:  It appears Albany Law School may have the same idea. ANOTHER UPDATE:  Another faculty member at South Carolina writes to…

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  • Predictors of Scholarly Productivity

    On the weekend in which law schools are interviewing aspiring law teachers for tenure-track jobs, it is perhaps worth calling attention to this: only two variables had any predictive power for “more and better” scholarship: (1) number of articles before first tenure-track job, and (2) publication of a student note. Judicial clerkships, law review membership,…

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  • Some Minor Corrections to the July 2005 Scholarly Impact Study Will be Forthcoming…

    …when I’m back in the U.S. next term (the raw data is all in Austin).  Thanks to readers who called to my attention errors (mostly of omission) in the listings for Vanderbilt, Ohio State, and William & Mary.  Once corrected, they will probably break the current ties and, in the case of Vanderbilt, may move…

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  • More Ranking Weirdness

    Not sure what the students at Harvard Law School were thinking in publishing this embarrassing proof of how indoctrinated they are by US News, except (of course) when it comes to their own school (though at least they do better than US News on Northwestern and Berkeley!).  My colleague Bernie Black makes the required observations…

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  • Where Supreme Court Clerks Went to School, 2005 Term

    This is including the clerks picked by the late Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, even though their fate is unknown (at least to me)–but the fact that the Chief Justice picked these clerks reflects well on them and their institutions. Here are the schools represented among the 2005 term clerks: 1.  Harvard University (10) 2.  Yale…

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  • World University Rankings by the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) (London)

    THES has published their second ranking of leading universities around the world here (you can register for a 2-week free trial period to see the rankings).  In format it looks like a U.S. News excercise, but (and this is key!) the focus is (largely) on the research and graduate quality of institutions.  60% of the…

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  • UT Law Dean Named as Sole Finalist to be President of UT Austin

    News release here.  This was expected, and is, in fact, wonderful for the University:  if anyone will move Texas into competition with the three state universities that are presently stronger (Berkeley, Michigan, and UCLA), it will be Bill Powers.  Of course, this also means the Law School will be joining the ranks of schools searching…

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  • Sextonism Watch: The University of Texas School of Law (!?!?)

    It was bound to happen!  A student, who asked to remain anonymous, writes: I nominate the University of Texas as this week’s violator.  Check out the hyperbole in the faculty introduction: The University of Texas School of Law has long had one of the outstandingfaculties in the nation, both in terms of the scholarly distinction…

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  • Denver Law Dean Ricketson to Step Down

    Story here.  (Thanks to Paul Caron for the pointer.)

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  • Does LawDragon Have No Standards?

    First comes the publicity-seeking stunt of identifying the nation’s top 500 lawyers based on no discernible criteria, then comes this e-mail from the publisher to me: Dear Professor Leiter, I’m delighted to inform you that you were recently nominated by your peers for one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for lawyers, the Lawdragon 500.…

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  • New Law School Ranking Site

    In partnership with Paul Caron and Joe Hodnicki (of Legal Blog Empire fame), we’ve created a new website for all my law school ranking materials with a new, and hopefully easier to use, design.  In addition, there are two new sets of ranking data, from 2005:  a ranking of the top 30 law faculties based…

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  • John Marshall Law Dean Mell Steps Down After only Three Years

    The law school’s press release is here.

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  • 450 Law Professors Call on Supreme Court to Grant Cert in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

    You can read the letter here:  Download professorstatement.pdf.  Of course, the Court not only needs to grant cert, it needs to reverse the D.C. Circuit and defend the rule of law!

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  • Protests Against Boalt Professor Yoo’s Role in Torture Memos Continue at Berkeley

    Story here. UPDATE:  Armen Adzhemyan, a 2L at Boalt, writes: The protests are not really continuing since they have nothing to do with the protests about ayear and a half ago when the memos were first released.  Those were by graduating 3Ls.  This is by an organization determined to disrupt campuses across the US.  To…

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  • Yale Law Journal Blog

    Here’s an interesting and potentially valuable use of a blog:  the Yale Law Journal has set up a kind of blog site for discussion and comments on articles published in the Journal itself.

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  • USC Law Dean Spitzer to Step Down at End of Academic Year

    Matthew Spitzer, Dean of the law school at the University of Southern California since 2000, will step down at the end of this academic year.  Six years is an above average term of service in the onerous world of law deaning, though not quite the remarkable twenty years of his precedessor as Dean, Scott Bice. …

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  • The Cooley Law School Rankings

    No doubt one of the great mysteries of our time is what the Administration of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan thinks it is accomplishing by publishing these preposterous rankings year in and year out.  Is it their goal to convince people that US News is rocket science?  (By comparison, it is.)  To…

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