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New Educational Quality Ranking of U.S. Law Schools for 1999-2000 Copyright © 1999 by Brian Leiter http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/philosophy/faculty/leiter/CV.HTM November 1999
The Educational Quality Ranking (hereafter "EQR") of U.S. law schools has emerged, since its debut in 1997, as the most widely discussed law school rankings after those published by U.S. News. The EQR is the only national ranking developed by a legal educator, someone with an insider's knowledge of law schools. The March 1998 issue of the American Bar Association Journal: The Lawyer's Magazine identified the EQR as one "of the better-known law school rankings." The National Law Journal (June 2, 1997) ran a front-page story on the EQR, reporting that this new ranking was "being praised as a more reasonable alternative by a number of law school deans." The rankings have been featured in newspapers around the country, as well as in various legal journals and the professional newsletters of the Midwest Association of Pre-Law Advisers and the Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisers. The EQR site has received thousands of visits, and has become a popular source of information for prospective students at the nation's leading colleges and universities. Unlike most other law-school rankings, the EQR focuses exclusively on the three factors central to a good legal education: the quality of the faculty, the quality of the student body, and the quality of teaching. The 1999-2000 "Ranking of U.S. Law Schools by Educational Quality" has been changed in two major respects: (1) Membership in the American Law Institute is no longer counted. Although a traditional badge of distinction in the legal academy, consideration of ALI membership skewed some results last year (e.g. the ranking of Stanford), that detracted from the overall value of the rankings. Several law professors also contacted me contesting the meaningfulness of small differences in total ALI membership. (2) This year's ranking incorporates the results of a comprehensive study of faculty quality that will appear in The Journal of Legal Studies (January 2000). This study reflects faculty affiliations for 98-99, and employed both objective and subjective reputational measures of faculty quality. It is the most comprehensive, reliable and up-to-date study of faculty quality available, and even before appearing has already generated considerable discussion and comment. Keep in mind that all rankings reflect contestable judgments about criteria and their relative importance. Thus, all rankings should be used with caution and with attention to what exactly they purport to measure. This ranking focusses exclusively on traditional academic criteria. Such criteria count for less than half of the well-known U.S. News rankings, by contrast. Academically serious and ambitious students, who embark upon the study of law with a sense of intellectual excitement, are likely to find the EQR of most value. THE CRITERIA The final rank of a law school is based on its performance in three categories: Faculty Quality (70% of final rank): the rank in this category is based on three criteria: scholarly productivity; scholarly impact of faculty work; and reputation. More precisely, the rank is based on the per capita rate of publication for the period 1995 through July 1998 (1) of articles in the ten leading student-edited law reviews and the ten leading peer-edited law journals, and (2) of books from the three leading law publishers and the eight leading academic presses (25%); the per capita rate of scholarly impact for the top quarter of each faculty based on citations to faculty work on the Westlaw JLR database as of July 1998 (25%); and the subjective academic reputation of the faculty based on a fall 1998 survey of academics conducted by U.S. News & World Report (50%). Each measure of faculty quality has advantages and limitations, but together they promise to present an informative picture. The rationale for the particular weightings, and the details of the study methodology, can be found in Brian Leiter, "Measuring the Academic Distinction of Law Faculties," Journal of Legal Studies (forthcoming January 2000). Since the time the faculty quality data was collected one major faculty move has occurred that affects the results for one school substantially: Philip Frickey at Minnesota accepted an offer from Berkeley. Because the Minnesota faculty is small, and because Frickey was clearly one of the three most important members of that faculty, his departure lowers Minnesota's rank noticeably. (Berkeley, as a larger and stronger faculty, certainly benefits from hiring Frickey, but his impact, in terms of objective criteria, on Berkeley's rank is negligible.) As a result, I have had to go back to the original data and make certain adjustments to reflect the loss of Frickey. In that one respect, the results here differ slightly from the results in the forthcoming Journal of Legal Studies article. Student Quality (30% of final rank): the rank in this category is based on data collected by the American Bar Association on student credentials for 1998 for the 75th and 25th percentile of the entering class. The EQR employs the U.S. News formula, except giving somewhat more weight to LSAT: 60% of the score is for 75th/25th LSAT, 40% for 75th/25th GPA. Note that, unlike last year, the measure is no longer confined to the top half of the class. This runs the risk of penalizing state schools and schools with aggressive alternative admissions procedures, but student comments on last year's EQR convinced me that looking at 75th and 25th percentile presents a more realistic portrait of the student body as a whole. Even the data on the 75th and 25th percentile, however, can still give a skewed picture in some respects. For example, at Texas while the 75th percentile LSAT is 164, the 90th percentile is 168, an unusually large gap between the 75th and 90th percentiles. Because Texas is so much larger than most peer schools, that means that there are about 50 students in the entering class with scores 168 or higher. Contrast this with much smaller schools, like Washington & Lee and the University of Washington, which report 75th percentiles of 166. In reality, that translates in to about 30 students with scores 166 or higher at Washington & Lee, and about 40 students at Washington--far fewer actual students than are at Texas with an even higher LSAT. For obvious reasons, it's easier to boost the 75th percentile numbers at smaller schools than larger ones, but it may not present the most accurate portrait of the student body (contrast, for example, the ranking of schools by placement as clerks on the U.S. Supreme Court, below). Teaching Quality was last year treated as 10% of the final rank, but many readers of the EQR correctly complained that the data was too limited and too crude to warrant this kind of quantification. This year, several years worth of Princeton Review Surveys of Student Satisfaction with Teaching are used to give "extra credit" to strong teaching faculties. Nine schools have quite consistently gotten high marks for teaching quality in these surveys year after year: Boston University, University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, University of Texas, Cornell University, College of William & Mary, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, and Washington & Lee University. These schools were, accordingly, pushed ahead one rank based on teaching quality. So, for example, Virginia was ranked 9th based on student quality and faculty quality, but is ranked 8th because of its reputation for teaching excellence. So too, Chicago and Yale tied for 1st based on student quality and faculty quality, but Chicago was nudged ahead, to occupy the #1 spot by itself, based on its reputation for teaching excellence. Faculty quality is given more weight than student quality because (1) it is the traditional measure of the academic caliber of an institution, (2) it correlates more reliably with reputation and prestige than any other factor, (3) it is less likely to produce a ranking that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and (4) some schools have notorious reputations for boosting the numerical credentials of the student body artificially (e.g. by admitting the Phys Ed majors with 4.0 GPAs and the like, or by making LSAT-driven admissions decisions). (Among the leading law schools, NYU is most often mentioned as the worst offender on this score.) The faculty quality measure is more sensitive to actual faculty quality and actual changes in faculty quality. Student quality largely tracks perceived prestige--hence the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect if rankings weight it heavily. Schools historically favored by U.S. News because of that magazine's use of criteria that reward small, private institutions typically have far stronger student bodies than measures of faculty quality would predict (see, for example, the results for Duke and Washington & Lee, below). It would be useful to be able to include data on reputation among practitioners. Unfortunately, no remotely reliable data exists. Because practitioner reputation is much more regional than academic reputation, any reputational survey that is not geographically balanced in very careful ways will produce meaningless results. (The U.S. News editors have admitted to me in discussion that their reputational surveys of practitioners are not geographically balanced.) EDUCATIONAL QUALITY RANKING vs. U.S. NEWS The EQR continues to omit consideration of tangential or prejudicial criteria, of the sort that mar the U.S. News results every year. For example, U.S. News assigns weight in the final rank to per capita expenditures, a criterion which rewards inefficiency and systematically favors small schools over large schools, since the latter enjoy obvious economies of scale. Similarly, U.S. News assigns weight in the final rank to spending on financial aid, a factor which seriously prejudices all state law schools, which charge lower tuitions in the first place and thus spend less on financial aid. Yet low tuition is a factor nowhere credited by U.S. News. U.S. News employs only subjective measures of reputation, which often reflect hearsay and out-of-date information; U.S. News assigns no weight at all to teaching quality. The EQR does omit job placement rates, which U.S. News includes. Unfortunately, there is simply no way--as even U.S. News admits--to verify the accuracy of the placement data schools report: U.S. News relies on an "honor" system, yet all the incentives invite dishonorable conduct. If U.S. News, for example, were to be believed, it would appear that the University of Kentucky and Loyola University-Chicago have better placement records than Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Chicago. Such absurd "results" counsel against employing putative placement data in ranking law schools. All the schools that provide a quality legal education--as measured by the criteria identified above--are schools that, without exception, enjoy a high success rate in placing their graduates. The top 15--the traditional "elite" law schools--all place nationally. [1] The ABA publishes employment data, and this is likely to be more reliable, but because the rates at which schools ascertain the employment rates of their graduates vary, even these figures are hard to interpret. Some very good schools report surprisingly high rates of "unemployed graduates seeking work"--for example, Harvard (2.4%) and Michigan (3.9%)--while weaker schools report lower rates to the ABA (for example, Duke [.5%] and North Carolina [.5%]). In short, by concentrating exclusively on the factors central to a good legal education--quality of the faculty and student body --and by omitting irrelevant and prejudicial criteria, the EQR eliminates the biases against public law schools that are the distinguishing characteristic of the annual U.S. News rankings. Thus, the EQR ranks 14 public schools among the top 30 in the nation, while U.S. news ranks only 10. If we exclude Michigan and Virginia, which are only nominally public law schools (they admit relatively few in-state residents, charge tuitions more like private schools, and operate largely or entirely with private money), here is how the 12 genuinely public law schools in the EQR top 30 fare by comparison to how they are treated by U.S. News:
A RANKING OF U.S. LAW SCHOOLS BY EDUCATIONAL Comparative Rankings for the Top 25
BREAKDOWN BY CATEGORY Overall Faculty Quality (by subjective and objective criteria)
Two schools that basically performed comparably to George Mason and San Diego, and thus really deserve to be in the top 50, are Rutgers-Camden (average rank of 50; subjective rank of 65, objective rank of 35) and Yeshiva University/Cardozo Law School (average rank of 50; subjective rank of 60; objective rank of 40). One anomalous result was that Duke ranked, for the first time ever, ahead of Cornell, Northwestern, and Texas in subjective reputation--schools it at best tied with, and typically trailed, in prior years. One possible explanation (given Duke's weaker showing by objective measures of faculty quality) is that repeated rankings of Duke in the top 10 by U.S. News for reasons unrelated to faculty quality have affected subjective perceptions even among academics. Ranking by Quality of Student Body Based on 75th and 25th percentile scores for the fall 1998 class: 60% of the rank is based on LSAT, 40% is based on GPA. As noted earlier, it is of course easier for smaller schools to boost the 75th percentile numbers than larger schools: thus, we find that all the schools with surprisingly "strong" student bodies by the measures employed here are unusually small (e.g. Washington-Seattle, Washington & Lee, Colorado). Hence, I list total size of the student body for purposes of comparison. Please note that the list is confined to the top 50 schools by overall quality. Having taught at the #1, #17, and #46 schools on this list, I can offer the following observation from personal experience: there is a more dramatic difference in student quality between #46 and #17 than between #17 and #1. Indeed, among the stronger students, there is essentially no difference between #17 and #1. (This may, admittedly, be a peculiarity of Texas, given the exceptional credentials of the strong end of the class [see the date above regarding 75th and 90th percentile scores].) The most noticeable differences at each school are found at the bottom of the class: the bottom at #1 is noticeably stronger than at #17, and so forth. The conclusion is hard to escape, given my experience, that above a certain LSAT/GPA threshhold, differences in numerical credentials make little difference in actual student ability and potential.
SUPREME COURT CLERKSHIP PLACEMENT Since 1996 (through the 1999-2000 term), this is how the nation's law schools rank for placement of graduates as clerks on the United States Supreme Court, the most prestigious job available to a recent law graduate. The number of clerks during this time period appears in parentheses.
Bear in mind that Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, and Northwestern enjoy the advantage of having former faculty now sitting as U.S. Supreme Court Justices. (Justice Breyer, for example, only took Harvard students as clerks for the 1999 term; he is a former member of the Harvard faculty.) Of the nation's leading law schools, only Cornell and Berkeley have had no Supreme Court clerks in recent years. It is also striking how poorly Supreme Court placement correlates with purported "student quality" (above). Obviously, the Justices know something that the numbers miss. MAJOR LAW SCHOOL FACULTY MOVES SINCE 1995 This list records lateral moves of faculty since 1995 at the top 25 law schools (in terms of faculty quality)--plus several perennial top 25 contenders--for the indicated period. The major hires from 1980-1994 are an illustrative, but not a complete listing: I've confined the list to five faculty at each school (if there were that many). Where the information was available, I list current "serious" visiting professors for 1999-2000 (i.e. faculty being considered seriously for permanent appointment). This latter information is less reliable and less comprehensive than the other information printed below. "Total faculty size" for each school is also listed, since the degree of movement (in and out of a school) is obviously related to total faculty size. Indeed, the schools that have lost the highest percentage of faculty in the last five years are: Northwestern University (29%) Note, however, that Chicago and Michigan added as many faculty laterally as they lost, though all the others suffered a net loss.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Maria Hylton from DePaul University Gary Lawson from Northwestern University David Lyons from Cornell University (emeritus at Cornell) Nancy Moore from Rutgers University, Camden Theodore Sims from George Washington University Lost to other schools: Richard McAdams to the University of Illinois Sai Prakash (untenured) to the University of San Diego. Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Technology Robert G. Bone from the University of Southern California Wendy Gordon from Rutgers University, Newark Susan Koniak from the University of Pittsburgh Larry Yackle from the University of Alabama Total faculty size: 46 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Brian Barry from the London School of Economics (joint with Political Science and Philosophy) Kimberle Crenshaw from the University of California, Los Angeles Michael Dorf (untenured) from Rutgers University, Camden Cynthia Estlund from the University of Texas, Austin Samuel Issacharoff from the University of Texas, Austin Avery Katz from Georgetown University Curtis Milhaupt from Washington University, St. Louis Joseph Raz from Oxford University (part-time appointment) Charles Sabel from the Department of Political Science, Massachussetts Institute of Technology Carol Sanger from Santa Clara University Jeremy Waldron from the Department of Politics, Princeton University. Lost to other schools: Bernard Black to Stanford University Martha Fineman to Cornell University Richard Pierce, Jr. to George Washington University Michael Young to George Washington University (to become Dean) Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: George Fletcher from the University of California, Los Angeles Jeffrey N. Gordon from New York University David Leebron from New York University Henry Monaghan from Boston University Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Jules Coleman from Yale University Katherine Francke from Fordham University Maureen O'Rourke from Boston University Susan Sturm from the University of Pennsylvania Mark Tushnet from Georgetown University Total faculty size: 59 CORNELL UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Martha Fineman from Columbia University Lee Teitelbaum from the University of Utah (as Dean) Lost to other schools: David Lyons to Boston University (emeritus at Cornell) Fred McChesney to Northwestern University Russell Osgood to Grinnell College (to become President) Offers outstanding to Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Theodore Eisenberg from the University of California, Los Angeles Jonathan R. Macey from the University of Chicago Steven H. Shiffrin from the University of California, Los Angeles Katharine van Wezel Stone from Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University Total faculty size: 41 DUKE UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: School at Duke) James Coleman from practice Frances McGovern from the University of Alabama Steven Schwarcz from practice Lost to other schools: Pamela Brooks Gann to Claremont-McKenna College (to become President) Benedict Kingsbury to New York University Offers outstanding to Jerome Reichman at Vanderbilt University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: H. Jefferson Powell from the University of Iowa Neil Vidmar from the University of Western Ontario Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Total faculty size: 33 EMORY UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Lost to other schools: Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Peter Hay from the University of Illinois Jeffrey Pennell from the University of Oklahoma Current serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Technology Marci Hamilton from Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University Total faculty size: 27 GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Julie Cohen (untenured) from the University of Pittsburgh Heidi Feldman (untenured) from the University of Michigan John H. Jackson from the University of Michigan (emeritus at Michigan) Donald Langevoort from Vanderbilt University Richard Lazarus from Washington University, St. Louis David Luban from the University of Maryland Carrie Menkel-Meadow from the University of California, Los Angeles Ronald Pearlman from practice Lost to other schools: Lisa Bernstein to the University of Chicago William Eskridge, Jr. to Yale University Daniel Halperin to Harvard University Avery Katz to Columbia University David Weisbach (untenured) to the University of Chicago Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Charles Lawrence from Stanford University Mari Matsuda from the University of California, Los Angeles Mark Tushnet from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Robin West from the University of Maryland Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Laura Underkuffler from Duke University Total faculty size: 86 GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: William Bratton from Rutgers University, Newark Robert Cottrol from Rutgers University, Camden William Kovacic from George Mason University Richard Pierce, Jr. from Columbia University Michael Young from Columbia University (as Dean) Lost to other schools: Thomas Morgan to Brigham Young University Theodore Sims to Boston University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Jack Friedenthal from Stanford University (as Dean) Philip Hamburger from the University of Connecticut Ira Lupu from Boston University Stephen Saltzburg from the University of Virginia Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Total faculty size: 65 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Lani Guinier from the University of Pennsylvania Daniel Halperin from Georgetown University Lawrence Lessig from the University of Chicago J. Mark Ramseyer from the University of Chicago William Stuntz from the University of Virginia W. Kip Viscusi from the Economics Department, Duke University Elizabeth Warren from the University of Pennsylvania Lost to other schools: Offers outstanding to: Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Reinier Kraakman from Yale University Robert Mnookin from Stanford University Joseph William Singer from Boston University Joseph Weiler from the University of Michigan Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: George Fisher from Stanford University Janet Halley from Stanford University A. Mitchell Polinsky from Stanford University Mark Roe from Columbia University Michael Schill from New York University William Simon from Stanford University Lynn Stout from Georgetown University George Triantis from the University of Chicago Robert A. Williams, Jr. from the University of Arizona Total faculty size: 70 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: William Allen from practice John Ferejohn from the Department of Political Science, Stanford University (part-time) David Garland from the University of Edinburgh Clayton Gillette from the University of Virginia Benedict Kingsbury from Duke University Michael Schill from the University of Pennsylvania Lost to other schools: Michael Klausner to Stanford University Charles Knapp to the University of California, Hastings (emeritus at NYU) Offers outstanding to Barbara Fried at Stanford University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Geoffrey Miller from the University of Chicago Daniel Shaviro from the University of Chicago Richard Stewart from Harvard University Frank Upham from Boston College Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Henry Hansmann from Yale University Stephen Perry from the University of Pennsylvania Richard Pildes from the University of Michigan Deborah Rhode from Stanford University Steven Shavell from Harvard University Anne-Marie Slaughter from Harvard University Total faculty size: 80 Note: In their infamously hyperbolic and widely distributed alumni magazine--which one Stanford professor has dubbed "law porn"--NYU has advertised as "major" appointments to the faculty (1) those who hold adjunct appointments at NYU, and a real appointment elsewhere, (2) those who hold appointments primarily in other departments at NYU, and are "affiliated" with the law school, (3) clinical appointments, and (4) those faculty in their dotage who spent their career elsewhere before setting up some relationship with NYU. I have omitted those appointments here, to focus on the genuine appointments of academic faculty in the law school. NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Shari Diamond from the Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago Andrew Koppelman (untenured) from the Department of Politics, Princeton University James Lindgren from Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology Fred McChesney from Cornell University Dorothy E. Roberts from Rugers University, Newark Lost to other schools: John J. Donohue III to Stanford University Stephen A. Gardbaum to the University of California, Los Angeles Keith Hylton to Boston University Gary Lawson to Boston University Laura Lin (untenured) to a non-academic position Elizabeth Mertz (untenured) to the University of Wisconsin, Madison Michael J. Perry to Wake Forest University Daniel Polsby to George Mason University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: David Haddock from the Department of Economics, Emory University Philip Postlewaite from the University of Notre Dame Paul Robinson from Rutgers University, Camden Richard E. Speidel from Boston University Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Kimberly Krawiec from the University of Oregon Total faculty size: 31 ======================================== STANFORD UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Richard Craswell from the University of Chicago John J. Donohue III from Northwestern University Deborah Hensler from the University of Southern California Pamela Karlan from the University of Virginia Michael Klausner from New York University Jeff Strnad from the University of Southern California Lost to other schools: Robert W. Gordon to Yale University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Margaret Jane Radin from the University of Southern California Kathleen Sullivan from Harvard University Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Rebecca Eisenberg from the University of Michigan Jed Rubenfeld from Yale University Total faculty size: 34 UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA Hired laterally: Jean Braucher from the University of Cincinnati Lost to other schools: Lynn A. Baker to the University of Texas, Austin Katherine Francke (untenured) to Fordham University David Golove (untenured) to Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University Joel Seligman to Washington University, St. Louis (to become Dean) E. Thomas Sullivan to the University of Minnesota (to become Dean) Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Toni Massaro from the University of Florida Ted Schneyer from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Elliott Weiss from Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University Robert A. Williams, Jr. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Total faculty size: 27 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY Hired laterally: Lauren Edelman from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Philip Frickey from the University of Minnesota Mark Lemley from the University of Texas, Austin Pamela Samuelson from the University of Pittsburgh Lost to other schools: Daniel Rodriguez to the University of San Diego (to become Dean) Edward Rubin to the University of Pennsylvania Jeremy Waldron to the Department of Politics, Princeton University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Robert Merges from Boston University Daniel Rubinfeld from the Department of Economics, University of Michigan Joseph Sax from the University of Michigan Franklin Zimring from the University of Chicago Total faculty size: 41 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, HASTINGS Hired laterally: Charles Knapp from New York University (emeritus at NYU) Roger C. Park from the University of Minnesota Lost to other schools: Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Dan Fenno Henderson from the University of Washington, Seattle (emeritus at Washington) Richard L. Marcus from the University of Illinois Ugo Mattei from the University of Trento (Italy) (part-time) William Wang from the University of San Diego Total faculty size: 47 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES Hired laterally: Stephen Gardbaum from Northwestern University Cheryl Harris from Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology Lynn LoPucki from Cornell University Lost to other schools: Kimberle Crenshaw to Columbia University William Forbath to the University of Texas, Austin Mark Grady to George Mason University (to become Dean) Carrie Menkel-Meadow to Georgetown University John Setear to the University of Virginia Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Joel Handler from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Stephen R. Munzer from the University of Minnesota Grant Nelson from the University of Missouri, Columbia Cruz Reynoso from practice Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Total faculty size: 55 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Hired laterally: Mary Anne Case from the University of Virginia Jack Goldsmith (untenured) from the University of Virginia Saul Levmore from the University of Virginia Martha Nussbaum from the Department of Philosophy, Brown University Eric Posner from the University of Pennsylvania Julie Roin from the University of Virginia George Triantis from the University of Virginia David Weisbach (untenured) from Georgetown University Lost to other schools: Stephen Choi (untenured) to the University of California, Berkeley Richard Craswell to Stanford University Stephen Holmes to the Department of Politics, Princeton University Dan Kahan to Yale University Daniel Klerman (untenured) to the University of Southern California Lawrence Lessig to Harvard University Michael McConnell to the University of Utah J. Mark Ramseyer to Harvard University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Daniel Fischel from Northwestern University R.H. Helmholz from Washington University, St. Louis Stephen Schulhofer from the University of Pennsylvania Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Daniel Farber from the University of Minnesota Philip Hamburger from George Washington University John Manning from Columbia University Andrei Marmor from Tel-Aviv University Total faculty size: 31 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO Hired laterally: Lost to other schools: Steven D. Smith to the University of Notre Dame Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Christopher Mueller from the University of Illinois Dale Oesterle from Cornell University Pierre Schlag from the University of Puget Sound (now Seattle University) Charles Wilkinson from the University of Oregon Total faculty size: 30 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Hired laterally: Richard Painter from the University of Oregon Lost to other schools: Donald Dripps to the University of Minnesota Steven L. Harris to Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology Deborah Merritt to Ohio State University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Total faculty size: 31 UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Hired laterally: Margaret Brinig from George Mason University Lost to other schools: Mary Dudziak to the University of Southern California Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Jean Love from the University of California, Davis Mark Osiel from Tulane University Michael Saks from the Department of Psychology, Boston College John-Mark Stensvaag from Vanderbilt University Total faculty size: 44 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Hired laterally: Omri Ben-Shahar from Tel-Aviv University Evan Caminker from the University of California, Los Angeles James Hathaway from York University (Canada). Robert Howse from the University of Toronto Ronald Mann (untenured) from Washington University, St. Louis Jane Schacter from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Lost to other schools: José Alvarez to Columbia University Michael H. Bradley to Duke University Jerold Israel to the University of Florida (took early retirement at Michigan) John H. Jackson to Georgetown University (took early retirement at Michigan) Avery Katz to Georgetown University Kent Syverud to Vanderbilt University (to become Dean) Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Richard Friedman from Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University James Krier from the University of California, Los Angeles William Ian Miller from the University of Houston James Boyd White from the University of Chicago Total faculty size: 58 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Hired laterally: E. Thomas Sullivan from the University of Arizona (as Dean) Mark Yudof from the University of Texas, Austin (as President of the University) Lost to other schools: Steve H. Nickles to Wake Forest University Roger C. Park to the University of California, Hastings Steven Penrod to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Mary Louise Fellows from the University of Iowa Michael Tonry from practice (formerly at the University of Maryland) Total faculty size: 33 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL Hired laterally: Marian G. Crain from the University of Toledo Gene Nichol from the University of Colorado (as Dean) Lost to other schools: Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Marilyn V. Yarbrough from the University of Tennessee Lawrence A. Zelenak from Lewis & Clark College/Northwestern School of Law Total faculty size: 35 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME Hired laterally: Dinah L. Shelton from Santa Clara University Steven D. Smith from the University of Colorado Lost to other schools: Douglas Kmiec to Pepperdine University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Gerard V. Bradley from the University of Illinois Alan Gunn from Cornell University Total faculty size: 26 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Hired laterally: Howard Chang from the University of Southern California Stephen Perry from McGill University Edward Rubin from the University of California, Berkeley Kim Lane Scheppele from the Department of Political Science, University of Michigan David Skeel from Temple University Lost to other schools: Eric Posner to the University of Chicago Michael Schill to New York University Elizabeth Warren to Harvard University Offers outstanding to: Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Colin Diver from Boston University (as Dean) Geoffrey C. Hazard, Jr. from Yale University (part-time appointment; also Director of the American Law Institute in Philadelphia) (emeritus at Yale) Michael Moore from the University of California, Berkeley Stephen Morse from the University of Southern California Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Marcella David from the University of Iowa Marc Fajer from the University of Miami Kathryn Heidt from the University of Pittsburgh Tracy Higgins from Fordham University Francis Hill from the University of Denver Eric Kades from Wayne State University Total faculty size: 34 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Hired laterally: Mary Dudziak from the University of Iowa Daniel Klerman (untenured) from the University of Chicago Lost to other schools: Dennis Curtis to Yale University Deborah Hensler to Stanford University Judith Resnik to Yale University Jeff Strnad to Stanford University Catherine Wells to Boston College Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Alexander Capron from Georgetown University Erwin Chemerinsky from DePaul University Susan Estrich from Harvard University Charles H. Whitebread II from the University of Virginia Total faculty size: 33 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN Hired laterally: Lynn A. Baker from the University of Arizona William E. Forbath from the University of California, Los Angeles Brian Leiter from the University of San Diego Basil Markesinis from Oxford University (part-time appointment) Lost to other schools: Samuel Issacharoff to Columbia University Mark Lemley to the University of California, Berkeley Edward Sherman to Tulane University (to become Dean) Michael Tigar to American University Mark Yudof to the University of Minnesota (to become President) Offers outstanding to: Barbara Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Douglas Laycock from the University of Chicago Sanford Levinson (untenured) from the Department of Politics, Princeton University John A. Robertson from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Gerald Torres from the University of Minnesota Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Russell Korobkin from the University of Illinois Andrew Kull from Emory University Rachel Moran from the University of California, Berkeley Total faculty size: 61 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA Hired laterally: Anne Coughlin from Vanderbilt University Barry Cushman from St. Louis University Chris Sanchirico (untenured) from the Economics Department, Columbia University John Setear from the University of California, Los Angeles Lost to other schools: Mary Anne Case to the University of Chicago Clayton Gillette to New York University Jack Goldsmith (untenured) to the University of Chicago Pamela Karlan to Stanford University Saul Levmore to the University of Chicago Julie Roin to the University of Chicago William Stuntz to Harvard University George Triantis to the University of Chicago Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: George M. Cohen from the University of Pittsburgh Edmund Kitch from the University of Chicago Steven Walt from the University of San Diego George Yin from the University of Florida Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: Thomas Merrill from Northwestern University Stephen Morse from the University of Pennsylvania Total faculty size: 63 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON Hired laterally: Elizabeth Mertz (untenured) from Northwestern University Lost to other schools: Jane Schacter to the University of Michigan Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Beverly Moran from the University of Cincinnati Joel Rogers from the University of Miami Total faculty size: 36 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Lost to other schools: Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Margaret Howard from St. Louis University David Partlett from the Australian National University Jerome H. Reichman from Ohio State University Larry D. Soderquist from the University of Notre Dame Total faculty size: 29 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS Hired laterally: John Owen Haley from the University of Washington, Seattle Joel Seligman from the University of Arizona (as Dean) Lost to other schools: Ronald J. Mann to the University of Michigan Curtis Milhaupt to Columbia University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Total faculty size: 31 YALE UNIVERSITY Hired laterally: Lea Brilmayer from New York University Dennis Curtis from the University of Southern California William Eskridge, Jr. from Georgetown University Dan Kahan from the University of Chicago Robert W. Gordon from Stanford University Judith Resnik from the University of Southern California Lost to other schools: Offers outstanding to: Lawrence Lessig at Harvard University Some major lateral hires 1980-1994: Jules Coleman from the Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona Robert Ellickson from Stanford University Carol Rose from Northwestern University Alan Schwartz from the University of Southern California Serious visitors, 1999-2000, include: John J. Donohue III from Stanford University Katherine van Wezel Stone from Cornell University Total faculty size: 41 TOP CHOICES BY SPECIALTY AREA This list was compiled in consultation with various experts in the different fields, as well as by consulting various anthologies of leading articles in each field. For each field, I list a half-dozen-or-so especially strong schools. The list is largely confined to the top 15 schools, other than in exceptional cases. Note that these lists sometimes differ from the lists compiled by U.S. News, in which academics in the area are asked to list ten or fifteen strong "programs" in these areas. Schools with established "programs" may not necessarily be schools with academically distinguished faculty in the area. What follows is based on faculty quality in the area. Please keep in mind that any good school will offer instruction in most or all of these fields. These lists simply flag the schools with the most outstanding faculties in the various areas. Administrative Law George Washington University New York University Northwestern University University of Chicago University of Pennsylvania University of Virginia Yale University Bankruptcy New York University University of Chicago University of Texas, Austin Vanderbilt University Yale University Civil Procedure Harvard University University of California, Hastings University of Pennsylvania University of Texas, Austin Yale University Commercial Law New York University Stanford University University of Chicago University of Michigan University of Virginia Yale University Comparative Law Harvard University University of Michigan University of Pennsylvania University of Texas, Austin Yale University Constitutional Law: Freedom of Religion Columbia University George Washington University New York University University of California, Berkeley University of Texas, Austin University of Utah Constitutional Law: Freedom of Speech Cornell University University of California, Berkeley University of Chicago University of Pennsylvania University of Texas, Austin University of Virginia Yale University Constitutional Law-General (incl. theories of constitutional interpretation) Duke University Georgetown University Harvard University Stanford University University of Chicago University of Miami University of Texas, Austin Yale University Corporate Law and Securities Regulation Harvard University New York University Stanford University University of Chicago Yale University Criminal Law (substantive) Northwestern University University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles University of Chicago University of Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure University of Chicago University of Florida University of Michigan Yale University Critical Race Theory Duke University Georgetown University New York University University of California, Berkeley University of Colorado Environmental Law Georgetown University New York University University of California, Berkeley University of Texas, Austin University of Washington, Seattle Yale University Feminist Legal Theory Duke University Georgetown University Harvard University Stanford University University of California, Los Angeles University of Chicago University of Michigan Health Law (excluding medical ethics) Georgetown University Ohio State University University of Houston University of Maryland International Law Georgetown University Harvard University New York University Yale University Intellectual Property Columbia University New York University Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Texas, Austin Jurisprudence Columbia University New York University University of California, Los Angeles University of Michigan University of Pennsylvania University of Texas, Austin Yale University Labor Law Cornell University Harvard University Northeastern University Ohio State University University of Illinois University of Pennsylvania University of Texas, Austin Law and Economics Harvard University New York University Stanford University University of California, Berkeley University of Chicago University of Pennsylvania Yale University Law and Religion (excluding First Amendment issues) Emory University University of Georgia University of Notre Dame Wake Forest University Yale University Law and Social Science (incl. Psychology and Sociology) University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles University of Michigan University of Pennsylvania University of Virginia University of Wisconsin, Madison Legal Ethics/Professional Responsibility/Legal Profession Georgetown University Stanford University University of Pennsylvania University of Texas, Austin University of Wisconsin, Madison Yale University Legal History New York University Stanford University University of Michigan University of Texas, Austin University of Virginia Yale University Moral and Political Theory (Anglo-American traditions) Columbia University New York University University of California, Berkeley University of Michigan Yale University Moral and Political Theory (Continental traditions) University of Chicago University of Texas, Austin Yale University Tax New York University Stanford University University of Chicago University of Texas, Austin Yale University Torts (including products liability) University of California, Los Angeles University of Chicago University of Texas, Austin University of Virginia Yale University
Footnote: [1] UCLA may be the only exception among the EQR top 15 to this generalization.
Contact: Brian Leiter at bleiter@mail.law.utexas.edu Return to Brian Leiter's Home Page | UT School of Law | University of Texas updated Nov. 1999 The Educational Equality Ranking of U.S. Law School for 2000-2002 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||