Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Osgoode Hall Law Faculty Turn Down Outside Money...

...and rightly so, given the terms on which it was offered.

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences: the Rich Get Richer...

...though some "new rich" may be emerging. Particularly striking this year were that NYU led Columbia in new members across all fields, and Northwestern similarly led Chicago, though by a smaller margin. Here are the schools with at least two faculty elected this year:

1. Harvard University (13)

1. Massachussetts Institute of Technology (13)

3. Northwestern University (9)

3. Stanford University (9)

5. New York University (8)

5. Princeton University (8)

5. University of Chicago (8)

8. Yale University (6)

9. University of Pennsylvania (5)

10. Columbia University (4)

10. University of California, Berkeley (4)

10. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (4)

13. Indiana University, Bloomington (3)

13. Rutgers University, New Brunswick (3)

13. University of Wisconsin, Madison (3)

All of the following schools had two faculty each elected this year: Cornell, UC San Diego, Southern California, Duke, Washington University in St. Louis, UC Irvine, Johns Hopkins, and Illinois/Urbana-Champaign.

You can see last year's tally here.

The "rich get richer" mainly because all existing members can vote on nominated candidates, regardless of field.

Five Law Professors Elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

They are:  Shari Seidman Diamond (Northwestern), Daryl Levinson (NYU), Adrian Vermeule (Harvard), David Weisbach (Chicago), and David Wilkins (Harvard).

Applicants with High LSAT Scores Drop More than Others

This is curioius.  I guess they're opting for more secure career options like PhDs in philosophy.

Empirical Legal Studies faculty lists, redux

A colleague elsewhere writes

[S]adly, with comments, the list has degenerated into including lots of people who cannot possibly be called “empiricists”. There are several categories of false positives: (1) non-empiricists who once or twice co-authored with empiricists, but clearly did not and cannot do empirical work on their own; (2) people who do “soft” empirical work, case studies and such; (3) people who have a non-empirical main field and clearly don’t know any math, but did a project or two counting random things and putting them into silly tables to support some position they took in their substantive field. The category #3 no doubt sounds vague, but empirical work is a lot more than counting random stuff, so you’d see a surprising level of consensus among serious empiricists re who is in category #3 who is not. My own simple but reliable proxy: if a person published an empirical paper in a top econ/finance/law-econ/polisci journal and *he did the empirical analysis himself* (rather than relying on a co-author), he is an empiricist. Otherwise, no. This promptly removes more than half of the list.

Perhaps this would set the bar too high, but I am worried about (1) and (3) especially resulting in significant padding of the lists.  Not sure at this point how we will proceed.

UPDATE:  Paul Edelman, a professor of both law and mathematics at Vanderbilt, writes:

There are certainly definitional problems with the project of ranking empirical legal studies groups, but I had to laugh at the criticism of  “people who have a non-empirical main field and clearly don’t know any math” since damn few empiricists know any math.  They have sophisticated training in some techniques but only a sophomore undergraduate's view of mathematics. Really, these guys have to get off their high horse.  Good empirical work is not brain surgery.

Powell from GW back to Duke

H. Jefferson Powell, a leading scholar of constitutional law and law & religion, who recently moved to  George Washington from Duke will be returning to the Duke law faculty next year.

How to get Supreme Court Justices to visit

Alabama has the secrets!  Having had the pleasure of being a Meador Lecturer there last fall, I can also report their hospitality is super!

Gary Myers New Dean at Mizzou; Penny Andrews to Lead Albany

The University of Missouri - Columbia has announced that Gary Myers, the associate dean for research at the University of Mississippi School of Law, will become its new dean effective August 15. Myers holds a JD from Duke and focuses primarily on IP law. Meanwhile, Albany Law School announced that Penelope Andrews, the associate dean for academic affairs at CUNY School of Law, will become Albany's dean and president effective this July. Andrews holds an LLB from the University of Natal, and an LLM from Columbia. Andrews work focuses on international and comparative law.

Law School Applications Down about 16% for the Year

Details here.  This comes on the heals of last year's smaller decline.  More analysis from Tamanaha.

Faculty Lists for "Empirical Legal Studies"

UPDATE:  The faculty lists should include those who do empirical work (in an economic, political science, sociological, or psychological vein), not simply those who are co-authors with those with the relevant disciplinary skills for empirical work.

===================

Various readers had asked that I run one of the on-line surveys about faculty quality in the "empirical legal studies" area broadly construed.  To that end, here's a draft of faculty lists for schools that might well rank in "the top ten" in this area.  I'm sure the lists are woefully incomplete, so please post additional names of faculty who works in this area in the comments.  And if there's a school that might rank in the top ten in this area, post that information in the comments as well.  Please post corrections int he comments below, do NOT e-mail me.  I need to have the corrections in one place.  If there's a very sensitive matter, you can e-mail me.  Thanks.

Faculty with an * have a primary appointment in another unit, as well as in the Law School. 

Columbia University: Jeffrey Fagan, M. Scott Hemphill, Bert Huang, Robert J. Jackson, Jr., Ronald J. Mann, Nathaniel Persily

Cornell University: Theodore Eisenberg, Michael Frakes, Valerie Hans, Michael Heise, Jeffrey Rachlinski, Stewart Schwab, *Martin Wells

Duke University: Daniel L. Chen, G. Mitu Gulati, Donald L. Horowitz, Jack Knight, Kimberly Krawiec, Neil Vidmar

Harvard University: Lucian Bebchuk, John Coates, Jacob Gersen, D. James Greiner, J. Mark Ramseyer, Mark Roe, Holger Spamann, Guhan Subramanian, Elizabeth Warren,

New York University: Jennifer Arlen, Ryan Bubb, Stephen Choi, Samuel Estreicher, James B. Jacobs, Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, Geoffrey Miller, Catherine M. Sharkey

Northwestern University: Bernard S. Black, Thomas J. Brennan, Peter di Cola, Shari Seidman Diamond, Zev Eigen, Ezra Friedman, Tonja Jacobi, Jonathan J. Koehler, James Lindgren, Kate Litvak, Janice Nadler, *Robert Nelson, Max Schanzenbach, Emerson Tiller

Stanford University: Michelle Landis Dauber, John J. Donohue III, David Freeman Engstrom, Deborah Hensler, Daniel Ho, Alison Morantz, Joan Petersilia

University of California, Berkeley: Prasad Krishnamurthy, Katarina Linos, Robert Macoun, Justin McCrary, and Anne Joseph O’Connell, Kevin Quinn, Daniel Rubinfeld, Jonathan Simon, Eric Talley, Franklin Zimring

University of Chicago: Lisa Bernstein, Tom Ginsburg, Bernard Harcourt, William Hubbard, Anup Malani, Edward R. Morrison, Thomas J. Miles, Eric Posner

University of Illinois: Kenworthey Bilz, Nuno Garoupa, David Hyman, Robert Lawless, Jennifer Robbennolt

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: Alica Davis Evans, Samuel R. Gross, Vik Khanna, John Pottow, J.J. Prescott, Adam C. Pritchard

University of Pennsylvania: David S. Abrams, Jonathan Klick, Theodore Ruger, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

University of Southern California: Lee Epstein, Daniel Klerman, Thomas Lyon, Mathew McCubbins, Dan Simon.

University of Texas, Austin: Ronen Avraham, Frank Cross, Jens Damann, Julius Getman, Stefanie Lindquist, Angela Litwin, H.W. Perry, *Mary Rose, Charles Silver, Jay Westbrook

University of Virginia: Michal Barzuza, Quinn Curtis, Joshua Fischman, Michael Gilbert, Richard Hyndes, Paul Mahoney, Gregory Mitchell, John Monahan, *Bobbie Spellman, Mila Versteeg

Vanderbilt University: Tracey George, Chris Guthrie, Joni Hersch, Owen Jones, Robert Mikos, W. Kip Viscusi

Yale University: Ian Ayres, Richard Brooks, Robert Ellickson, Christine Jolls, Dan Kahan, Yair Listokin, Tracey Meares, Tom Tyler