The University of Texas School of Law has long had one of the outstanding faculties in the nation, both in terms of the scholarly distinction of the faculty members and their success in the classroom. UT's recent recruitment of leading senior scholars from Stanford, NYU, and Michigan has pushed the school in to the very top ranks of American law faculties. Science Watch (2002), for example, now ranks the law faculty 5th in the nation for scholarly impact based on citations to faculty work. A 1996 Chicago-Kent Law Review study found that articles by Texas faculty were cited more often by the courts than articles by any other law faculty in the nation. More than one-third of the faculty is elected to the American Law Institute (one of the highest percentages of faculty membership in the nation). Texas is one of only nine law schools in the United States with four faculty elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the nation's most prestigious learned society.
For eight years in a row now, national surveys of law student satisfaction with teaching conducted by The Princeton Review have named Texas one of the top ten teaching faculties in the United States, even ranking Texas first one year. Of the nation's top law schools, only Texas and the University of Chicago Law School have enjoyed such consistently high marks for teaching.
Most faculty members graduated from this or other leading law schools. Many faculty hold advanced degrees in cognate fields (including economics, philosophy, history, and political science). Texts and treatises authored by faculty members are used by students and practitioners throughout the country. Some fifty members of the faculty hold endowed Chairs or Professorships, made possible by gifts to The University of Texas Law School Foundation.