Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

20 Most-Cited Critical Theories of Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law faculty in critical theories of law (including Critical Race Theory and feminist legal theory) in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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What do you need to find out now that you've gotten a tenure-track offer?

MOVING TO FRONT SINCE SOME SCHOOLS HAVE STARTED TO EXTEND OFFERS (ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 24, 2009--I HAVE UPDATED CERTAIN NUMBERS)--SEE ALSO THE COMMENTS, WHICH HAVE HELPFUL ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS

With luck, some of you seeking law teaching jobs will get offers of tenure-track positions in the next couple of months; a handful of offers have already been extended this season (2019-20).  What then?  Here's roughly what I tell the Chicago job candidates we work with that they need to find out, and in the interest of having it written down in one place and for the benefit of others too, here it is (not in order of importance):

1.  You will want to get (in writing eventually) the basic salary information, obviously, and the nature of summer research support and the criteria for its award (is it automatic for junior faculty?  contingent on prior publication [if so, how much?]?  awarded competitively (if so, based on what criteria/process)?).   You should also find out how salary raises are determined.  Are they, for example, lock-step for junior faculty?  Fixed by union contract?  (Rutgers faculty, for example, are unionized, a huge advantage and why they are among the best-paid faculty, not just in law, in the country.)  Is it a 'merit' system, and if so is it decanal discretion or is their a faculty committee that reviews your teaching and work each year?

2.  You should ask for a copy of the school's tenure standards and get clear about the expectations and the timeline.  Does any work you have already published count towards meeting the tenure standard?

3.  What research leave policy, if any, does the school have?  A term off after every three full years of teaching is a very good leave policy; some schools have even better policies, most have less generous leave policies.  (If there is a norm, it is a term off after every six years.)  Many schools have a special leave policy for junior faculty, designed to give them some time off prior to the tenure decision.  Find out if the school has such a policy.

4.  One of the most important things to be clear about is not just your teaching load, but what courses you will be teaching precisely.  You should ask whether the school can guarantee a stable set of courses until after the tenure decision.  Preparing new courses is hugely time-consuming, and you also get better at teaching the course the more times you do it.  As a tenure-track faculty member, having a stable package of, say, three courses (plus a seminar) will make a huge difference in terms of your ability to conduct research and write.   In my experience, most schools will commit in writing to a set of courses for the tenure-track years (and do ask for this in writing), but some schools either won't or can't.   In my view, it's a good reason to prefer one school to another that one will give you the courses you want and promise them that they're yours, while another won't--a consideration that overrides lots of other factors, including salary.

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20 Most-Cited Corporate & Securities Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020 (CORRECTED 10/20/21))

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law faculty in corporate law and/or securities regulation in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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Lateral hires with tenure or on tenure-track, 2021-22

These are non-clinical appointments that will take effect in 2022 (except where noted); I will move the list to the front at various intervals as new additions come in.   (Recent additions will be put in bold.)  Last year's list is here.

 

*Michelle Adams (civil rights, constitutional law, law & race) from Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University to the University of Michigan.

 

*John R. Brooks (tax law & policy) from Georgetown University to Fordham University.

 

*Amy Schmitz (alternative dispute resolution, law & technology, consumer law) from the University of Missouri, Columbia to Ohio State University (effective January 2022).

 

*Shelley Welton (environmental law, energy law) from the University of South Carolina to the University of Pennsylvania.

 

*Lindsay Wiley (health law) from American University to University of California, Los Angeles (effective January 2022).

Links to all the 2021 Scholarly Impact ranking posts *so far* (for citations during 2016-2020)

Top 50 law faculties in overall scholarly impact, 2021

Top 25 law faculties in median scholarly impact, 2021

10 Most-Cited Faculty in the US, 2016-2020

10 Most-Cited in Antitrust

10 Most-Cited in Civil Procedure

10 Most-Cited in Commerical Law

20 Most-Cited in Constitutional Law

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The Yale Law School spectacle continues

What an embarrassment (again!).

10 Most-Cited Antitrust Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty writing on antitrust in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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10 Most-Cited Torts and Insurance Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020 (CORRECTED)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty writing on torts and/or insurance law in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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"The Epistemology of the Internet and the Regulation of Speech in America"

A draft of this paper is now available, which will be presented at Georgetown next month.  It picks up on some ideas first mentioned in an earlier blog post and presentation in Turin, which generated a lot of interest:  finally there is a shareable paper. Here is the abstract:

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Nobel prize in economics awarded for innovation in causal inference from observational data (Michael Simkovic)

Three renowned labor economists, David Card (Berkeley), Joshua Angrist (MIT) and Guido Imbens (Stanford Business School) shared the Nobel prize in economics for their pioneering work using observational (i.e., non-experimental) data for causal inference.  This work facilitated empirical analysis of the effects of various legal and public policy changes, which are enacted in the real world and not under laboratory conditions.  Many scholars in law & economics and empirical legal studies built on their work and relied on the techniques the prize-winners developed.  

Card is famous for a series of difference-in-differences analyses across state borders that showed that moderate increases in minimum wage often don't lead to unemployment, as had been previously believed based on economic theory and simplifying assumptions.  Card's work was met with substantial skepticism, and conflicting claims from other empiricists, but he eventually changed the conventional wisdom among economists--a triumph of empiricism over theory and of science over ideology.  Card is a co-editor of the Handbook of Labor Economics.

Angrist and Imbens developed new ways to identify Local Average Treatment Effects, such as the use of instrumental variables. Angrist is also a co-author of Mostly Harmless Econometrics, a text that is widely used to train economists, law professors with an empirical bent, and other researchers.  Imbens' methodological work is taught heavily in an empirical studies workshop run by Bernard Black at Northwestern and the late Matt McCubbins at Duke.  Imbens is also the co-author of a popular book on empirical methods, Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences.  

Black & McCubbin's workshop--which I highly recommend--is intended to help law professors and other researchers learn to engage in more sophisticated empirical analysis.

In widely cited work, Angrist found strong evidence that military service--specifically in Vietnam--adversely affected subsequent earnings.  Imbens and Angrist have also found strong evidence that education substantially increases subsequent earnings, using changes and variation in compulsory schooling laws. The causal relationship between education and earnings is now widely accepted among labor economists and other empiricists.

 

20 Most-Cited Intellectual Property Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020 (CORRECTED)

CORRECTED 9/2/21:  Prof. Sprigman was wrongly omitted from the top 20.

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law faculty in intellectual property law in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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10 Most-Cited Health Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020 (CORRECTED)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty writing on health law in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."  (Thanks to Glenn Cohen and Mark Hall for guidance about this field.)

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$13 million gift to Villanova Law

Wow!  Unlike the wealthy alums who give to Yale, I bet this won't come with donor control over appointments and course content!

"My Favorite Law Review Article"

A new video series sponsored by the American University Law Review.  There are instructions at the site about how to submit your own video.

10 Most-Cited Family Law Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty writing on family law in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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"Back to Hart"

This paper may be of interest to some readers; the abstract:

This essay is part of a symposium on "The Most Important Contemporary Problem in Legal Philosophy." The essay addresses two different senses of important “problems” for contemporary legal philosophy. In the first case, the “problem” is having forgotten things we learned from H.L.A. Hart, and, partly as a result, encouraging pointless metaphysical inquiries in other directions that take us very far from questions about the nature of law and legal reasoning. In the second case, the “problem” is to attend more carefully to Hart’s views and his philosophical context to think about the problem of theoretical disagreement, and to understand the way in which later commentators have misunderstood his behaviorist (Rylean) analysis of “accepting a rule from an internal point of view.”

More highly educated populations are more likely to be vaccinated against COVID (Michael Simkovic)

Economists, sociologists, and public health researchers have long observed that more highly educated groups tend to be healthier and live longer than those that are less educated.  Debates emerged about whether increasing levels of education caused improvements in health.  Some economists argue that those who know themselves to be healthy at a young age will be more likely to pursue additional education because they expect to benefit from it more, over a longer career because their greater health enables them to work longer and harder.  Many others argued that education inculcates healthier habits--diet, exercise, sleep, medical checkups, prophylactic use, skepticism about "alternative" (non-evidence-based) medicine--and provides individuals with the literacy, numeracy and critical thinking skills to make better health-related decisions going forward.

A new study by my colleagues at USC's  Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) finds that more highly educated populations are more likely to be vaccinated, more likely to choose to be vaccinated, believe that vaccines are more effective, and believe that the risks from vaccination are lower, compared to their less educated counterparts.  Across education levels, Asians are the most pro-vaccination group, while blacks are the least.

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10 Most-Cited Evidence Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty writing on evidence in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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Sag v. Sisk on scholarly impact rankings

Professor Matthew Sag (Loyola/Chicago) called my attention to his recent critique of and alternative to Professor Sisk's scholarly impact rankings.  I have not had an opportunity to look at his paper, but I did read his blog post.  Professor Sag states: 

Gregory Sisk and his team release these rankings of the top 67 or so schools every three years. And so every three years I find myself wondering: “Really? Can it be true that all these schools have higher academic impact scores than Loyola Chicago, DePaul, and Houston Law?”  The short answer is: no, it’s not remotely true. There are quite a few schools that Sisk leaves out who would outrank those he includes on almost any conceivable method of aggregating citation counts.

This is not correct, however:  Sisk et al. studied DePaul and Houston, but not Loyola/Chicago.  If you are only trying to rank the top third of U.S. law schools by scholarly impact, you need only to study those schools there is reason or evidence to think will be in the top third. Sisk et al. studied 99 schools.  (I list only the top 50, since I'm very confident that is the top 50 in impact based on citations.)    (Professor Sisk says more, below, about how schools were chosen for inclusion.)

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10 Most-Cited Civil Procedure Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020 (CORRECTED)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty in civil procedure in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2021, and that the pre-2021 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.    Faculty for whom roughly 75% or more of their citations (based on a sample) are in this area are listed; others with less than 75% of their citations in this field (but still a plurality) are listed in the category of "other highly cited scholars who work partly in this area."

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