Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

In Memoriam: Thomas Buergenthal (1934-2023)

A leading expert on international law and human rights, Professor Buergenthal was emeritus at George Washington University and also served as a judge on the International Court of Justice.  As a child, he survived the concentration camps, which he he wrote a book about.  I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.

 

Lateral hires with tenure or on tenure-track, 2022-23

These are non-clinical appointments that will take effect in summer or fall 2023 (except where noted); (recent additions will be in bold.)  Last year's list is here.

 

*Zohra Ahmed (criminal law & procedure) from the University of Georgia to Boston University (untenured lateral).

 

*Ifeoma Ajunwa (law & technology, race & law, employment law) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to Emory University.

 

*Alena Allen (health law, torts, feminist legal theory) from University of Arkansas, Fayetteville to Louisiana State University (to become Dean).

 

*Vikram Amar (constitutional law, civil procedure, federal courts) from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (where he has been Dean since 2015) to the University of California, Davis (where he taught before moving to Illinois).

 

*Robert Anderson (corporate, admiralty) from Pepperdine University to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

 

*Bernadette Atuahene (property, law & international development) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison to the University of Southern California.

 

*Kimberly Bailey (criminal law & procedure, evidence) from Chicago-Kent College of Law/Illinois Institute of Technology to the University of Cincinnati. 

 

*Derek Bambauer (intellectual property, law & technology) from the University of Arizona to the University of Florida, Gainesville.

 

*Jane Bambauer (First Amendment, law & technology, privacy) from University of Arizona to University of Florida, Gainesville.

 

*Nadia Banteka (criminal law & procedure, law & technology, international law) from McGeorge School of Law/University of the Pacific to Florida State University.

 

 

*Benjamin Barros (property) from the University of Toledo (where he is Dean) to Stetson University (to become Dean).

 

 

*Robert Bartlett III (corporate) from the University of California, Berkeley to Stanford University.

 

 

*Valena Beety (criminal law & procedure, gender & law) from Arizona State University to Indiana University, Bloomington.

 

*Noa Ben-Ashar (gender, sexuality & the law, family law) from Pace University to St. John's University.

 

*Anya Bernstein (administrative law, civil procedure, law & society) from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York to the University of Connecticut (effective January 2023).

 

*Johanna Bond (international human rights, gender & law) from Washington & Lee University to Rutgers University (to become Dean).

 

*Alexander A. Boni-Saenz (trusts & estates, property, age & the law, race & the law) from Illinois Institute of Technology/Chicago-Kent College of Law to the University of Minnesota.

 

*Stephanie Bornstein (administrative law, civil procedure, employment law) from the University of Florida, Gainesville to Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.

 

*Luke Boso (criminal law, constitutional law, education law) from the University of San Francisco to Southwestern Law School.

 

*Andrea Boyack (real estate, housing law & policy, consumer law) from Washburn University to the University of Missouri, Columbia.

 

*Christopher Bradley (bankruptcy, commercial law, law & technology) from the University of Kentucky to the University of Florida, Gainesville.

 

*Eleanor Brown (property, immigration and migration law, law & development) from Pennsylvania State University, University Park to Fordham University (effective January 2023).

 

*Yvette Butler (constitutional law, civil rights, criminal law & procedure, work law) from the University of Mississippi to Indiana University, Bloomington (untenured lateral).

 

*Jud Campbell (constitutional law, legal history) from the University of Richmond to Stanford University.

 

*Sergio Campos (civil procedure) from the University of Miami to Boston College.

 

*Eric Chaffee (securites regulation, corporate, tax) from the University of Toledo to Case Western Reserve University.

 

*Carliss Chatman (contracts, corporate, professional responsibility) from Washington & Lee University to Southern Methodist University.

 

*Colleen Chien (intellectual property, law & technology) from Santa Clara University to the University of California, Berkeley.

 

*Jeremiah Chin (constitutional law, race & law, Federal Indian Law) from St. Thomas University (Miami) to Seattle University (untenured lateral).

 

*Jonathan Choi (tax, statutory interpretation) from the University of Minnesota to the University of Southern California.

 

*Jessica Clarke (constitutional law, employment discrimination, sexual orientation/gender & the law) from Vanderbilt University to the University of Southern California.

 

*Harlan Cohen (international trade, international law) from the University of Georgia to Fordham University (effective January 2024).

 

*Kristin Collins (immigration law, family law, federal courts, legal history) from Boston University to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

 

*Brendan Conner (torts, constitutional law, gender, sexuality & law) from St. Thomas University (Miami) to Widener Delaware Law School (untenured lateral).

 

*Julian Cook (criminal law & procedure, evidence) from University of Georgia to University of Florida, Gainesville.

 

*Colin Crawford (environmental law, property, land use) from Golden Gate University (where he is Dean) to the University of Arkansas, Little Rock (to become Dean).

 

*Hanoch Dagan (contracts, torts, private law theory) from Tel-Aviv University to the University of California, Berkeley.

 

*Deepa Das Acevedo (employment law, law & anthropology, law & politics of India) from the University of Alabama to Emory University.

 

*Steven Dean (tax) from Brooklyn Law School to Boston University.

 

*Stephanie Holmes Didwania (empirical legal studies, law & economics, criminal law, intellectual property) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison to Northwestern University (untenured lateral).

 

*William Dodge (international business transactions, international litigation & arbitration, contracts) from the University of California, Davis to George Washington University (effective August 2024).

 

*Veena Dubal (employment law, Critical Race Theory) from the University of California College of Law, San Francisco to the University of California, Irvine.

 

*Melissa J. Durkee (international business transactions, international environmental law, corporate) from the University of Georgia to Washington University, St. Louis.

 

*Monika Ehrman (natural resources law, property, energy law, environmental law) from the University of North Texas at Dallas to Southern Methodist University.

 

*Avlana Eisenberg (criminal law & justice) from Florida State University to Boston College.

 

*Jacob Eisler  (constitutional law, election law) from the University of Southampton (UK) to Florida State University (untenured lateral).

 

*Ofer Eldar (corporate, corporate finance) from Duke University to the University of California, Berkeley.

 

*Sheldon Evans (criminal law, immigration law) from St. John's University to Washington University, St. Louis.

 

*Mailyn Fidler (criminal law & procedure, law & technology) from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln to the University of New Hampshire (untenured lateral).

 

*Shawn Fields (criminal law & procedure, constitutional law, immigration law) from Campbell University to California Western School of Law (untenured lateral).

 

*Victor Flatt (environmental law, energy law) from the University of Houston to Case Western Reserve University.

 

*Mary Anne Franks (civil rights, law & technology, constitutional law) from the University of Miami to George Washington University.

 

*Amy Gajda (First Amendment, privacy, media law) from Tulane University to Brooklyn Law School.

 

*Kristelia Garcia (intellectual property) from the University of Colorado, Boulder to Georgetown University.

 

*Pedro Gerson (immigration law, criminal law) from California Western School of Law to the Pozen Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago (untenured lateral).

 

*Jonathan Gingerich (law & philosophy, intellectual property, property) from King's College, London to Rutgers University (untenured lateral).

 

*Mark Glover (trusts & estate, contracts) from the University of Wyoming to the University of South Carolina.

 

*Michele Goodwin (health law, constitutional law) from the University of California, Irvine to Georgetown University.

 

*Tristin Green (employment law, race, gender, disability & the law) from the University of San Francisco to Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.

 

*Marsha Griggs (property, evidence) from Washburn University to Saint Louis University.

 

*Ariela Gross (legal history) from the University of Southern California to the University of California, Los Angeles.

 

*Pratheepan Gulasekaram (immigration law, constitutional law) from Santa Clara University to the University of Colorado, Boulder.

 

*Kelly (Dineen) Gillespie (health law, bioethics, torts) from Creighton University to Saint Louis University (effective January 2023).

 

*Aya Gruber (criminal law, feminist legal theory) from the University of Colorado, Boulder to the University of Southern California.

 

*Kevin Haeberle (securities regulation, corporate) from the College of William & Mary to the University of California, Irvine.

 

*Andrew Hammond (civil procedure, administrative law, poverty law) from the University of Florida, Gainesville to Indiana University, Bloomington (untenured lateral) (effective January 2023).

 

*Haider Ala Hamoudi (Islamic law, Middle East law) from the University of Pittsburgh (where he is Interim Dean) to the University of Cincinnati (to become Dean).

 

*Christoph Henkel (contracts, corporate, commercial law, bankruptcy, banking law)  from Mississippi College School of Law to Drake University.

 

*Kristin Hickman (tax, administrative law, legislation/statutory interpretation) from the University of Minnesota to the University of Texas, Austin (effective January 2024).

 

*Jeremiah Ho (contracts, legal pedagogy, race, gender, sexuality & the law) from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth to Saint Louis University.

 

*Clare Huntington (family law, poverty law) from Fordham University to Columbia University.

 

*Gus Hurwitz (law & technology, administrative law, antitrust, law & economics) from the University of Nebraska Lincoln to the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition at the University of Pennsylvania (as Senior Fellow & Academic Director).

 

*Katherine Jackson (corporate, contracts, political & legal theory) from the University of Dayton to the University of Cincinnati (untenured lateral).

 

*Neha Jain (international law, human rights, comparative law) from the European University Institute & University of Minnesota to Northwestern University.

 

*Maryam Jamshidi (national security law, international law, torts) from the University of Florida, Gainesville to the University of Colorado, Boulder (untenured lateral).

 

*Garry Jenkins (law & philanthropy, corporate governance, leadership studies) from the University of Minnesota (where he is Dean) to Bates College (to become President).

 

*Andrew Jennings (securities regulation, corporate) from Brooklyn Law School to Emory University (untenured lateral).

 

*Ben Johnson (federal courts, judicial decision-making, empirical legal studies) from Pennsylvania State University, University Park to University of Florida, Gainesville (untenured lateral).

 

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Three law professors elected to the American Philosophical Society

They are:   James Forman (Yale), Catharine MacKinnon (Michigan), and Dorothy Roberts (Penn).

Given the new (inexplicable) USNews.com ranking stew...

...Derek Muller (Iowa) predicts what next year's ranking will look like.  There is always the possibility that the reputational scores will fluctuate (arbitrarily), but my guess is this won't be far off what the 2024 rankings look like!  Note some of the dramatic changes predicted!

Lawsky's entry-level hiring report for 2023

It's here!  Very informative, as always.  A few quick observations. Over the last five years, we've seen a decline in job applicants submitting FAR forms, from 344 five years ago, to 334, 297, 328 last year, and an all-time low of 272 this year.  At the same time, there's been an increasing number of hires:  82 five years ago, 119 last year, 113 this year.  Last year 76 schools were hiring, this year 79.  Five years ago, only 60 school were hiring.  I expect it will be a good year to be on the job market this fall (unless the Republicans force a default, in which case all bets are off!).   

The data on the law school attended by newly hired faculty is informative, but not as informative as the relative success rate of candidates from each school would be.  100% of Chicago graduates on the market got tenure-track jobs.  But I don't have the data on other schools, although you can see prior success rates here and here and here.  My guess is schools with the largest number of graduates taking jobs this year had somewhat higher placement success rates this year than in the past, but I doubt any were at 100%.

Why did Yale's academic reputation score plunge from (tied for) 3rd to (tied for) 6th this year?

Was it because Yale led the charge on the boycott of USNews.com?  Was it the accumulated effect of various embarrassing events, from judges boycotting Yale over free expression issues to the Amy Chua melodrama?  Was it a reflection of a widely perceived decline in the strength of Yale's younger faculty compared to their elders?   Was it all of these?  What's clear is the drop this year was pretty dramatic by historical standards for USNews.com reputation surveys, and of course this year is way down from a decade or so ago when Yale was usually tied for 1st or 2nd in academic reputation.

More on the new USNews.com ranking stew

Prof. Derek Muller (Iowa) breaks it down.   Basically, the editors chose to downgrade the importance of "input" metrics (like LSAT and GPA), and dramatically increase the weight for output measures (like bar passage and employment), which now count for more than 50% of the overall score.  In a way, this is salutary, since it will incentivize schools to improve those metrics (or fudge more aggressively!).  The whole formula still of course makes no sense, and is inexplicable in terms of the weightings.  What is clear is that the results are even more detached from traditional criteria of excellence, like faculty quality.  The rankings will also now be much more volatile, for reasons Professor Muller explains.

USNews.com has outdone itself: it has made its law school rankings even more absurd than before!

There's not much to say about what is essentially a random ordering of law schools within tier groups.  Any student who made a decision on the basis of small (and, in some cases, even large) ordinal differences in this year's travesty really should have a cause of action against USNews.com.  (Some of the swings in overall rank are beyond bizarre!  UC Davis and Arizona dropped from the top 50?  Emory and George Washington dropped out of the top 30?  Is this a joke?)   I won't belabor the obvious, and will just repost an updated version of something I posted a year ago.  If anyone extends it beyond "the top 10," please let me know.

US News overall rank	School	Overall scholarly impact rank	Scholarly impact rank for faculty under 60	SCOTUS “per capita” placement rank	Academic reputation rank in US News	Avg. rank across the last four metrics [rank]
1	Stanford University	6	10	3	1	5 [5]
1	Yale University	1	3	1	6	2.75 [3]
3	University of Chicago	2	1	2	3	2 [1]
4	University of Pennsylvania	8	14	15	9	11.5 [outside top 10]
5	Duke University	12	8	9	11	10 [10]
5	Harvard University	3	2	3	2	2 [1]
5	New York University	4	5	5	3	4.25 [4]
8	Columbia University	5	9	9	3	6.5 [6]
8	University of Virginia	9	5	5	9	7.0 [7]
10	Northwestern University	15	17	9	12	13.25 [outside top 10]
10	University of California, Berkeley	6	7	9	6	7.0 [7]
10	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	13	13	5	6	9.25 [9]

 

How to de-escalate confrontations...

...for lawyers and citizens, via lawprof Walter Effross (American).  Some good techniques!

Purdue has been runnning "Concord Law School" online in Indiana since 2017, and wants to avoid ABA oversight (UPDATED)

A concerned Indiana law professor writes:

Purdue's [Concord] law school enrolled 798 students last year.

 

Only 8 [out of 17 first-time takers] passed the bar exam. 

 

These facts are not mentioned in the Indiana Supreme Court's proposed rule change to exempt Purdue from ABA oversight, nor the working group report behind it.

 

If the exemption passes, Purdue will be free to advertise itself as "Indiana approved," with no obligation to continue disclosing its lackluster attrition bar passage and attrition rates.

 

The Indiana State Bar Association opposes the exception.

 

Locals expect the court to approve the exception as a favor to Purdue, whose outgoing President, Mitch Daniels, appointed Chief Justice Loretta Rush in his prior role as Governor.

 

Concord Law School is part of Purdue University Global, Mitch Daniels' flagship initiative. The online arm has an F rating from the Better Business Bureau, due to persistent complaints of fraud.

 

There is no public outcry in Indiana, where the legislature is busy debating transgender policy and criminal penalties for librarians who distribute banned books.  Indiana University's general counsel has discouraged its faculty from engaging in "activism."

UPDATE (MAY 4):  A colleague elsewhere (not Indiana) writes:

               The Concord bar exam pass rate document linked to is only for the California Bar Exam.  8 students passed in 2022 as first-time takers, but it was not out of 798 as the Indiana law professor implies, but out of 17 sitting for the exam for the first time.  That’s a 47% passage rate.  That’s dismal, but on par with Elon and Cooley, and better than a few ABA accredited schools.  

               The real issue is that only 17 students took the California bar.  Perhaps others took the bar in other jurisdictions, but that generally requires an ABA-accredited JD.  And yet Concord only seems to graduate 25-40 students per year.  Most of the students who matriculate never make it to graduation—the attrition is crazy high:  In 2021 there were 535 1Ls.  In 2022 there were 122 2Ls.  That’s 78% attrition after 1L year.  Where did the other 413 former 1Ls go?