Brian Leiter’s Law School Reports

News and views about law school and law

  • Whittington v. Moyn

    Here and here. Round 1 to Whittington.

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  • Is a law degree “worth” the cost in terms of return-on-investment?

    The answer is still “emphatically” yes. Lawprof Sloan Speck reviews some recent research on the topic; an excerpt: Among eighteen graduate degrees, law provided the third-highest return to earnings (59%) and cost-adjusted returns (41%). Only medicine and pharmacy provided higher returns. Similar patterns held for gains in net present earnings (41% for law) and internal rate of return (22%).…

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  • Law Schools Unfairly Ranked by U.S. News

    MOVING TO FRONT (ORIGINALLY POSTED OCT. 3 2011, SLIGHTLY REVISED IN THE INTERIM), SINCE IT IS TIMELY AGAIN I've occasionally commented in the past about particular schools that clearly had artificially low overall ranks in U.S. News, and readers e-mail me periodically asking about various schools in this regard.   Since the overall rank in U.S. News is a…

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  • Texas A&M Law “on the move”

    I’m not talking about its much-improved USNews.com rank, which may help with student recruitment, but doesn’t mean anything. I’m talking about the faculty hiring bonanza that has seen the recruitment in recent years of William Sage (health law) from UT Austin, Neil Siegel (constitutional law) from Duke and, most recently, Larry Solum (constitutional law &…

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  • Law professors write to the dishonorable Brendon Carr…

    …the FTC Chair who is neither a public servant nor a good faith actor, or this letter would not be necessary.

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  • Even judges cannot figure out whether lawyers are incompetent or using AI!

    Philosophy graduate student Charles Bakker sends me this interesting article from Canada about an “Ontario lawyer [who] filed seven completely fake quotations from court cases to a judge while arguing in court, but claims it was human error and not artificial intelligence tools behind it. A skeptical judge wonders if the lawyer’s claim makes things…

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  • Berkeley law touts its rankings

    And they should, given that they are badly treated by USNews.com. The fatal problem, of course, with HeinOnLine rankngs is that they only record citations to articles in the Hein database that are cited by articles in the Hein database, which is to say that a huge amount of important legal scholarship vanishes as a…

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  • Which AI-writing detector is best?

    A reader calls my attention to this article about Pangram. Curious to hear from readers about their experiences with AI-writing detection programs, whether Pangram, or others.

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  • “General jurisprudence” in U.S. law schools

    Anyone working in legal philosophy who has spent time in Europe or other civil law countries (especially) is aware that most law faculties there typically have entire departments of jurisprudence, with multiple faculty. The historical explanation for this enviable state of affairs is no doubt complex, although the huge influence of Hans Kelsen, the Austrian…

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  • New in online scams: “book clubs” that want to feature your recently published academic book (UPDATED)

    I received the following regarding my new book: From: Heather Podruchny <info.sf.bestseller.book.club@gmail.com>Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2026 5:56 PMTo: Brian Leiter <bleiter@uchicago.edu>Subject: Invitation: Analyzing the “Realist Point of View” with the SF Bestseller Book Club Dear Brian Leiter, I hope this finds you well. My name is Heather Podruchny, and I’m the organizer of the SF…

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  • 36% decline in student visas issued under Trump…

    …during May and June 2025 (crucial months) according to CHE. The decline was even higher in some countries, like India. This is probably a combination of foreign students rethinking their interest in studying in the U.S., given the serial violations of the free speech rights of foreign students by the Trump Administration, and more vetting…

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  • The rule of law in America hangs on (UPDATED)

    Not in international affairs, of course, where it never did,but domestically: the Trumipistas are abandoning their efforts to coerce law firms in violation of the 1st and 5th Amendments of the Constitution. Kudos to Perkins Coie, Wilmer Hale, Susman Godrey, and Jenner & Block. And eternal shame to Paul Weiss, the first to capitulate. UPDATE:…

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  • “From a Realist Point of View” exists!

    (UPDATE: Amazon is currently selling the hardcover at an 18% discount [I don’t know why, but I’m not complaining!] I received my copies the other day here in Chicago. More information. A couple of devoted souls even bought it on Amazon (despite the price!). (It was ranked about 8 million a week ago.) My thanks!…

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  • Most cited Anglophone scholarly monographs on corporate law (by law professors) since WWII (according to Google Scholar) (CORRECTED)

    Results rounded to the nearest 100, as usual. Only books with at least 1,000 citations are listed. Treatises are not included. Please email me with omissions/corrections.

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  • Being a law Dean in the age of AI

    Dan Rodriguez, the former Dean at Northwestern and San Diego, comments.

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  • AI generates Trump’s “state of the union” address

    Not bad, and probably more coherent than what he will say this evening. I do not plan on listening. UPDATE: Philosopher Peter Klein asked ChatGBT5.2 to write the Democratic response. It follows: Democratic Response to the 2026 State of the Union Delivered by Governor Abigail Spanberger Good evening. I speak to you not only as…

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  • “The finance industry is a grift”

    (MOVING TO FRONT, THIS MAY NOT HAVE PUBLISHED PROPERLY THE FIRST TIME) It’s not every day that the NYT publishes an article by an economist arguing that one of the main industries in NYC is a “grift.” Since many law professors study this “grift,” I’m curious to hear why the author is wrong or right.…

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  • How LLMs write

    This is a very apt diagnosis by philosopher Luciano Floridi; an excerpt: Hedging — compulsive softening to avoid commitment. “It’s worth noting,” “arguably,” “in many ways,” “to some extent,” “it could be said that,” “it’s important to remember,” “there’s a sense in which”…. Throat-clearing — long preambles before getting to the point. “Before we dive…

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  • Former Penn President and law professor Liz Magill named Dean at Georgetown Law

    Good for Georgetown! Liz Magill is a “natural” for this role (she had been Dean at Stanford Law School, Provost at UVA, and President at Penn, until forced out by neanderthals).

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  • AI developer warns the AI jobs apocalypse is closer than we realize

    Here; an excerpt: [O]n February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT). And something clicked. Not like a light switch… more like the moment you realize the water has been…

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  • Ambitious class action lawsuit against academic publishers dismissed

    Here. (Earlier coverage.)

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  • Why the big decline in JD students transferring to another law school?

    Lawprof Derek Muller explores some possible reasons. Comments are open here for those with additional hypotheses or thoughts.

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  • My legal philosophy blog is coming back to life…

    …here, stimulated partly by the advanced class in general jurisprudence I’m teaching this quarter (readings from Dickson, Dworkin, Enoch, Leiter, Toh, Kelsen, Atiq and others). Readers interested in legal philosophy may find some of the posts of interest.

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  • Law professors publishing in peer-reviewed finance journals

    Here, courtesy of Mike Simkovic. These journals are important in the corporate law/finance world, less so elsewhere. It would be interesting to see similar studies involving law faculty who have published in elite peer-refereed philosophy, economics, and political science journals. If anyone compiles the information, let me know.

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  • Most cited books on American constitutional law since WWII (according to Google Scholar)

    I’ve tried to list all scholarly monographs with at least 1,000 citations (rounded to the nearest 100). I excluded treatises. Please email me with corrections or omissions

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  • In Memoriam: Barbara Aronstein Black (1933-2026)

    A longtime member of the Columbia Law faculty, where she was emerita, Professor Black was an expert in legal history and the first woman to serve as Dean of Columbia Law School. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew her or from those who wish to comment on the significance of her work.…

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  • The 25th Amendment will not save the US (or the world)

    Mark Graber, a leading public law scholar at the University of Maryland, posted this on Facebook (his response to a Newsweek inquiry that he did not expect to be published in full) and kindly gave permission for me to share it here. It seems to me exactly right. There are both political and legal problems…

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  • I’m falling behind on email…

    …and will probably not be able to respond to everyone. It’s a very busy quarter for me, with a lot of new preparation (for both my seminar and my Jurisprudence II course). My apologies to those who do not get replies. I still welcome, of course, emails with information and/or links.

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  • New Arkansas Law Dean has offer rescinded…

    …after threats from state legislators to cut funding to the school in Fayetteville. Why? The candidate, Professor Emily Suski, had signed an amicus brief on behalf of transgender athletes. Not a good look for Arkansas, and it raises a serious question about who would want the job given this?

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  • “25 Most Influential People in Legal Education”…

    …based on the annual poll by The National Jurist. I’m the highest rank person on the list (at #13) who isn’t a Dean or head of the AALS or LSAC or some other major law school-adjacent organization. I’m just a guy with a blog, which means I owe this recognition to you, loyal readers. Thank…

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  • Academic freedom in Hong Kong

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I was in Hong Kong in December for, among other things, a conference on “Academic Freedom in Asia.” There I met Professor Cora Chan, a public law scholar at Hong Kong University, who kindly sent me her bracing paper on “Scholarship in Times of Constitutional Transformation: A View…

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  • Texas ousts the ABA from any role in lawyer admissions

    The Texas Supreme Court will create its own list of accredited law schools whose graduates may practice in the state. Admittedly, Texas has not in recent years been at the forefront of human progress, but in this case, they may be the canary in the coal mine. Perhaps this will encourage the ABA’s Council on…

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  • Top ten law schools with the highest percentage of tenured faculty in the top 96 by D-index

    Following up on yesterday’s post about the top 95 faculty by D-index, here are the top ten schools based on the percentage of their tenured faculty who made the top 95. Rank School % of tenured faculty # of faculty 1 University of Chicago 24%   9 2 Yale University 17%   9 3 Stanford…

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  • Top 96 law professors ranked by D-index for 2025… [CORRECTED]

    …according to https://research.com./. The d-index is the H-index for discipline specific journals. Unfortunately, they don’t specify the list of discipline-specific journals, but it almost certainly does not include student-edited law reviews (but almost certainly does include all faculty-edited law-related journals, including interdisciplinary ones). Some fields are promiscuous with their citation practices (e.g., health law and…

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  • Predicting the next set of USNews.com rankings…

    …using the latest ABA data. My guess is USNews.com will tweak the formula to avoid demoting Yale to 5th.

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  • What we (i.e., University of Chicago Law faculty) are reading

    Others may find this longstanding feature of interest.

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  • In Memoriam: William E. Nelson (1940-2025)

    Professor Nelson, a leading legal historian, was emeritus at NYU Law School, where he spent most of his academic career and from which he also graduated. There is a memorial notice here. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Nelson or for those who would like to comment on the significance of…

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  • AI grades law school exams about as well as human law professors

    Here. ADDENDUM: I joked with Professor Schwarcz (Minnnesota), one of the co-authors, that soon AI would be writing exam answers, and AI grading them! He replied, sensibly, as follows: The key difference is that students SHOULD not use AI to craft their exam answers. The purpose of a law school exam is to show their…

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  • The “academic community”: New York vs. London

    Legal philosopher and public law theorist Alon Harel (Hebrew U/Jerusalem), who recently spent several months first in New York City, then in London, shared the following on Facebook and gave me permission to share it here: As I am old and retiring in a few months I can say the truth without fearing the consequences…

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  • In Memoriam: Stephen R. Munzer (1944-2025)

    Professor Munzer, a longtime member of the law faculty at UCLA, where he was recently emeritus, wrote widely on topics in jurisprudence, especially the philosophical foundations of property, as well as other legal and bioethical topics. Comments are open for remembrances from those who knew Professor Munzer or for those who would like to comment…

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