Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

Harvard Law professor writes article about Japanese “comfort women”…

February 8, 2021

…which is generating quite a bit of controversy in South Korea as well as back home (see also). The article at issue is here and a more popular summary here (and here is an online resource about the general topic). Fortunately, no one is calling for Professor Ramseyer, a leading expert on Japanese law, to…
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Rostron & Levit update their invaluable guide to submitting to law reviews

February 2, 2021

They write: We just updated our charts about law journal submissions, expedites, and rankings from different sources for the Spring 2021 submission season covering the 199 main journals of each law school. We have created hyperlinks for each law review to take you directly to the law review’s submissions page. Again the chart includes…
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Are other universities recovering from the financial crunch of the pandemic?

February 1, 2021

Washington University in St. Louis is: a law professor there tells me that the University restarted retirement contributions this past October (they had been suspended from July 1), and the law school retroactively awarded last year's summer stipends that had been suspended. The University is also starting the merit raise process for 2021-22 early, with…
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Leshem v. USC

January 27, 2021

The appellate court reverses, and sends it back to to the trial court: Download B296102_OPF_Leshem. Professor Leshem's case continues (earlier coverage).
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Proof at the Salem witch trials

January 25, 2021

An entertaining and informative essay.
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More on UIC John Marshall Law School and the case of Professor Kilborn

January 20, 2021

Law professor Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern) offers a critical (and fair) assessment of the case we noted last week.
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In Memoriam: Deborah L. Rhode (1952-2021)

January 19, 2021

MOVING TO FRONT (ORIGINALLY POSTED JANUARY 9: UPDATED A leading scholar of legal ethics and the legal profession, as well as gender and the law, Professor Rhode spent her academic career at Stanford Law School. I will add links to memorial notices as they appear. UPDATE: The Stanford memorial notice is here. ANOTHER UPDATE: The…
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Violation of academic freedom at UIC John Marshall Law School

January 15, 2021

IMPORTANT UPDATE BELOW: PROFESSOR KILBORN WAS NOT SUSPENDED BECAUSE OF THE EXAM QUESTION FURTHER UPDATE: THE ADDITIONAL ALLEGATIONS AGAINST PROFESSOR KILBORN TURNED OUT TO BE BOGUS. Last month, we noted UIC John Marshall Dean Darby Dickerson's suggestion "that law schools should be 'transformed' into 'anti-racist institutions' [as distinct from being non-racist ones that comply with…
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A statement by law school Deans about last week’s events at the Capitol

January 12, 2021

A fine statement.
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Ratio of median debt of law school graduates to their median income

January 11, 2021

Another interesting study from Professor Derek Muller (Iowa).
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In Memoriam: David Dolinko (1948-2020)

January 10, 2021

MOVING TO FRONT FROM DECEMBER 31–UPDATED Emeritus at UCLA, where he spent his entire career (and earned both his J.D. and Ph.D. in philosophy), Professor Dolinko was an important contributor to criminal law theory and many topics in substantive criminal law and procedure. Professor Dolinko succumbed yesterday to COVID. I will add links to memorial…
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Dickerson Fellowship at the University of Chicago Law School

January 8, 2021

Applications are open.
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This didn’t age well

January 5, 2021

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How have law schools been teaching?

January 4, 2021

More than half are offering in-person classes, at least partially, while roughly 40% are fully online.
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Non-JD enrollment in law schools continues to grow

December 23, 2020

Derek Muller (Iowa) documents the trend. Non-JD students (mostly LLM students, but also some undergradutes [especially at Arizona], as well as non-degree candidates) have the virtue of generating revenue while being invisible in the U.S. News rankings.
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Blast from the past: when a Harvard 3L’s racist email made national headlines…

December 16, 2020

…and led to lots of confused rationalizations, back in 2010.
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Canadian Association of University Teachers passes motion of censure of University of Toronto…

December 9, 2020

…for permitting outside political interference in the appointments process at the Law School. CAUT censure means all faculty are discouraged from attending conferences at Toronto, collaborating with faculty there, etc. A shame the Law School's misconduct may bring this sanction down on the entire university in six months. (Earlier coverage.)
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It’s a good thing the President of the AALS doesn’t really matter to legal education…

December 7, 2020

…or there would be reasons to be quite worried about some parts of the recent missives from current AALS President Darby Dickerson (who is also Dean at UIC John Marshall Law School). In the past, I have commended to the attention of readers some of Dean Dickerson's advice, so these recent statements come as a…
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Dorf v. Sunstein (and others) on SCOTUS’s striking down of the NY public health regulations affecting houses of worship

December 3, 2020

Professor Dorf is on a roll!
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I talk about the Supreme Court and legal realism…

December 2, 2020

…at Brain in a Vat, where I also learned a bit about South African constitutional law.
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Trump lawyer Joe DiGenova should be disbarred…

December 1, 2020

…but not shot!
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Dorf v. Epstein on COVID…

December 1, 2020

…with a guest appearance by the Laffer Curve!
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“The Roles of Judges in Democracies: A Realistic View”: the podcast…

November 30, 2020

…with Professor Brian Frye (Kentucky), regarding this article. My thanks to Professor Frye for inviting me to discuss it!
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Justice Amy Coney Barrett, newest member of the super-legislature…

November 26, 2020

…delivers for her constituents, i.e., religious conservatives. This is why she was chosen, it had nothing to do with intelligence or legal competence: it was so she would exercise her power as a super-legislator on behalf of issues dear to religious conservatives, public health or the general welfare be damned. Governor Cuomo should declare the…
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The Constitutional Court of South Africa: the building

November 23, 2020

A lovely tour from former Justice Albie Sachs, a brilliant judge and a deeply humane and courageous man, a kind of jurist utterly foreign in the highest reaches of the U.S. legal profession in recent years.
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Clearing away some jurisprudential myths

November 19, 2020

The myth that H.L.A. Hart had a "practice theory" of rules. The myth that the so-called "normativity" of law presents a problem for legal positivism, let alone a special or interesting one. The more recent myth that Hart made any kind of "category mistake" in his account of social rules or the rule of recognition.…
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In Memoriam: Drew S. Days III (1941-2020)

November 18, 2020

A former Solicitor General of the United States, Professor Days was also a longtime member of the Yale faculty. The Yale memorial notice is here.
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The dumbest law teacher in America?

November 16, 2020

Quite possibly. He's a lecturer, teaching skills courses, but not a member of the clinical or academic faculties at the University of Miami. Assuming he enjoys contractual protection for academic freedom (I don't know if he does), then he is protected from sanction by Miami for his extramural speech. There is no evidence that he…
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Law professors who are part of the Biden transition teams

November 12, 2020

Law professor Jonathan Adler (Case Western) compiles the names.
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AALS announces winners of this year’s Scholarly Paper Competition

November 11, 2020

The winner is "Distributing Civil Justice" by Matthew A. Shapiro (Rutgers). Honorable mention went to: "The Case for Abolition of Criminal Confessions" by Guha Krishnamurthi (South Texas), "Bankruptcy Grifters" by Lindsey Simon (Georgia), and "Foreign Dictators in U.S. Court" by Diego Zambrano (Stanford).
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Jones Day seems rather too tightly linked to Trump…

November 10, 2020

…and some lawyers there are worried. Law students may not be formally boycotting Jones Day (as some are boycotting Paul, Weiss), but one suspects that the choices of many will be influenced by this high-profile association.
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Western Michigan University ends “affiliation” with Cooley Law School

November 6, 2020

Not good for Cooley, but perhaps not fatal: Cooley has already changed enormously in the wake of the 2010 downturn in law school applicants. From the article: Once a large law school with four campuses, Cooley downsized in the past decade. Enrollment fell from more than 3,900 students in 2010-11 to 1,156 in 2019-20. The…
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Two big changes in hiring for law teaching jobs over the last decade

November 5, 2020

In my conversation with Professor Kerr awhile back, I said there were two, but we ended up discussing only one: namely, the way in which a PhD or VAP/Fellowship has now become almost essential for being hired. The other big change that I've observed over the last ten years has been the dramatic increase in…
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Law school applicants up more than a third so far this year…

November 3, 2020

…which will bode well for law school faculty hiring next year, and may even lead some schools to invest this year in new faculty. Given the tight job market for college grads, it may also be that more college seniors have decided to apply to law school already. If economic conditions brighten, some of them…
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A lot of anxiety, resentment, self-deception, and sour grapes about the law teaching job market…

October 29, 2020

…on display here, especially in many of the comments (and there's also pushback in the comments). The law teaching job market is very far from a "lottery" (as one commenter put it); if it were a lottery, it wouldn't be possible to predict fairly well how candidates will fare. It is true that the law…
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How NYU recruited faculty from top law schools in the 1990s: a case study

October 27, 2020

Richard Stewart, a leading scholar of administrative and environmental law at Harvard, moved to NYU in the early 1990s. He lived in a 4,000 square foot town house in Greenwich Village, a few blocks from NYU's law school. This was rented to him by the University at an undisclosed price, but no doubt well below…
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Evidence-driven education policy, money, and influence (Michael Simkovic)

October 26, 2020

I recently discussed research debunking claims that law school and business school are only worthwhile for those privileged enough to gain admission to elite programs. Press coverage has been curiously oblivious to social science research using high quality data and well-established methods. Why might the press overlook high quality information sources while instead elevating the…
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The era of Condorcet polls is over

October 23, 2020

The results of the last poll are here, and basically regurgitate US News (or the "halo effect" of school name) with a couple of exceptions. But there was also more mischief this time. As one reader reported (by examining the detailed breakdown of votes): I’m reaching out because I was looking at the raw balloting…
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Blast from the past: an open letter to Bob Morse at US News about steps to take to prevent the “gaming” of the rnakings

October 19, 2020

…is collected here. (Earlier coverage.) Ten years ago. U.S. News took none of the recommended steps, which pretty well sums up what the law school rankings are really about (and it's not providing help to students).
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The timing of this year’s job market

October 15, 2020

Without a "meat market" around which schools and candidates coordinate their behavior, the timing is quite various this year. Some schools are still scheduling initial interviews, while other schools hosted call-backs as early as September. Some schools have even started extending offers. This is going to make things more challenging all around; I hope hiring…
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