Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

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.

 

*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.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

*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.

 

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

 

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

 

*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).

 

*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.

 

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

 

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

 

*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).

 

*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).

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

*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).

 

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Stanford Law Dean Martinez's letter to the SLS community about the disruption of Judge Duncan's talk

It's a very methodical and substantial letter, worth reading by Deans and other academic administrators faced with situations like this.  The Associate Dean who contributed to the disruption of the event is currently on leave.  Individual students will not be disciplined because of the difficulty of identifying the perpetrators, and because the administrator present exacerbated the disruption rather than instructing students correctly about university rules.  (Dean Martinez's explanation is more nuanced than this simple summary suggests.)

The Dean also alludes, more than once, to the threats and abuse directed at members of the Stanford community in the wake of the media coverage.  It would be nice if law enforcement actually went after those making unlawful threats:  those people are as bad or worse for the functioning of society than the disruptive students.

Blast from the past: where U.S. law faculty went to law school

Back in 2008.  The main change since is that I would expect Michigan to be lower, and NYU to be higher.

NY Times catches up with the Amy Wax case at Penn...

...but doesn't understand academic freedom, in ways that are typical.  The reporter says that Dean Ruger's move to sanction Wax threatens "one of tenure’s key tenets — the right of academics to speak freely, without fear of punishment, whether in public or in the classroom."   That "or" conceals a world of difference! 

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Stanford law students protest the apology to Judge Duncan

That's the story according to this journalist (with a somewhat selective interest in free speech matters in my experience).  I'd be curious to hear from those at Stanford, faculty or students, whether this is accurate.  Please use a valid email address, which will not appear.  (Submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.)

CEO of company that makes its $$$ by peddling consumer misinformation to students...

...is morally indignant that schools won't cooperate with his enterprise.  This is some real chutzpah!  They don't provide information, they collect data, don't audit it for accuracy, and then throw it into a nonsensical and inexplicable formula to produce an illusion of precision regarding supposed "qualitative" differences.  It's precisely because they are not providing information that they probably can't be sued under "consumer fraud" statutes.

The Stanford Law disaster involving a FedSoc event with Judge Duncan

UPDATE:  The Stanford President and Dean Martinez in the law school have now issued an appropriate apology for this fiasco, including an acknowledgment (unlike in Dean Martinez's letter to the SLS community) that Dean Steinbach's conduct was inappropriate.

=======original post follows==========

The video online gives a sense of the chaos and heckling which disrupted the event.  F.I.R.E. offers a summary of the events, as well as a transcript of the peculiar and inappropriate remarks of Dean Steinbach, the DEI Associate Dean at the Law School.

Stanford is a private university, so the Law School could, of course, adopt the rule that they will not permit Republican-appointed judges to speak on campus, and they will not permit a student chapter of the Federalist Society.  They do not do that, I assume for a mix of reasons of principle and prudence.  Moreover, they have a free speech policy that specifically prohibits disrupting speakers invited to campus.

SLS Dean Martinez's letter to the community is posted below the fold.  I do not think it is a particularly good response (it is in the "mistakes were made, but we have good intentions" genre), but readers will judge for themselves.  A better response would have been simpler:

On March 9, students disrupted a speech by a federal judge invited by a student group.  This violates law school policies, and a disciplinary investigation has commenced, and students found to have participated in the violation will be subject to the appropriate disciplinary procedures.  We apologize to Judge Duncan for the disruption of the event, and administrative staff will receive training about how to manage situations like this to insure that an invited speaker may address students.

Dean Martinez's actual email in response to these events is below the fold:

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Professor Lawsky's "Entry-Level Hiring Report" for the 2022-23 season...

...is now open and collecting information.  When you accept an entry-level position this year, submit your information to Professor Lawsky please.

Academic freedom and diversity

Rutgers lawprof Stacy Hawkins argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education that "Sometimes Diversity Trumps Academic Freedom," and I point out some errors in her analysis.

More on gaming the USNews.com rankings via "median" LSAT and GPA

UPDATED:  A reader sent along the site to which my colleague, below, is referring.

A colleague at a proverbial "top ten" law school writes with some interesting observations a propos yesterday's topic (esp. the issue raised in the "Update"):

Because US News ranks schools based on *median* GPA and LSAT, many schools game admissions to optimize their medians for the purpose of rankings.

 

A school can try to admit 49% of its class with LSAT scores at or above their target median, even if their grades are atrocious. They can admit another 49% of the class with GPAs at or above their target median, even if their LSAT scores are terrible. Then they admit 2% that are above the median in both — offer them scholarships if necessary. Any student who was just below the median for both GPA and LSAT would be rejected, even if they would be more likely to succeed than most of the students admitted.

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These are *not* the "choosiest" law schools, these are the ones most busy gaming USNews.com rankings

This is, alas, fairly gullible "reporting":

No. 1 for the highest median undergraduate grade point average is the University of Alabama School of Law, which accepted students with a 2022 median undergrad GPA of 3.95. Yale Law’s undergrad GPA was 3.94, putting it in a tie with the University of Virginia School of Law and the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis. In fifth place is the Texas A&M University School of Law.

The top five in terms of median LSAT are Yale Law (175), followed by Harvard Law School (174). Tying for third place are the University of Chicago Law School, Columbia Law School and Stanford Law School (173).

Most law schools figured out long ago that in the USNews.com formula, you get more benefit from a high median GPA than a high median LSAT:  that's because the scores are normalized, and with the LSAT there's only about 20 places in play (175 to 155, say), while with GPA it's a much wider spread (sixty places or more), so that if you're near the top, you do better in the USNews.com formula.  That's why, e.g., places like Alabama, Wash U, and Texas A&M can be in the "top five" for median GPA but nowhere near the top for five median LSAT:   they made a choice to sacrifice LSAT in order to inflate GPA.  That's a good strategy for rising in USNews.com rankings.  It doesn't make them "choosy," it makes them strategic.  And, of course, omitted from the picture is what majors these GPAs are in:  a 3.95 GPA in chemistry or economics or philosophy is quite a bit different than a 3.95 GPA in communications or education.  If it's more of the latter than the former, than once again it's not "choosiness" but strategy. 

UPDATE:  A colleague at Wash U points out that I am mistaken about Wash U, which has a very high median LSAT as well (although not "top five").  Since the combination of a high median LSAT and a high median GPA tracks past USNews.com rankings (plus location--which helps the coasts, not the midwest), and Wash U's combination is a real outlier in this regard, the question is how are they doing it?  There are three (not mutually exclusive) possibilities I can think of:  (1) they are paying a fortune to get these students; (2) they are admitting a very small 1L class, and increasing the number of transfer students to make up lost revenue (their credentails do now account in USNews.com land); (3) they are disregarding the demandingness of the curricular program when it comes to GPA.

ADDENDUM:  These data suggest #1 is a key factor.

The debate over requiring the LSAT (or some other admissions test) continues...

...despite the last proposal being rebuffed.  As the NYT notes:

The association is considering dropping that requirement, and letting each law school decide for itself whether tests are necessary.

Opponents and supporters of the change both make arguments on behalf of diversity — a sensitive subject in the field of law, which is disproportionately white. The arguments echo other debates over standardized testing at all levels of higher education, a practice that some see as an equalizer and others see as a barrier.

What's odd, of course, is that more attention is not being given to the question whether the LSAT is a useful predictive tool, regardless of its effects on "diversity."

Best American judges of the 20th century?

The earlier poll got nearly 200 responses, though since Professor Kerr (Berkeley) linked to it from his popular Twitter account, the responses probably came from more than just the regular blog readers.  Of the write-ins (some of whom were not eligible, like Roger Taney [!]), the only one that got traction, rightly so, was Robert Jackson, who should have been on the original list.  In any case, here are the top 15 from the poll:

1. Louis Brandeis  (Condorcet winner: wins contests with all other choices)

2. Learned Hand  loses to Louis Brandeis by 54–51

3. Benjamin Cardozo  loses to Louis Brandeis by 59–45, loses to Learned Hand by 57–54

4. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  loses to Louis Brandeis by 55–47, loses to Benjamin Cardozo by 60–52

5. William Brennan  loses to Louis Brandeis by 57–45, loses to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. by 52–49

6. Henry Friendly  loses to Louis Brandeis by 53–33, loses to William Brennan by 48–37

7. Thurgood Marshall  loses to Louis Brandeis by 60–32, loses to Henry Friendly by 42–33

8. Earl Warren  loses to Louis Brandeis by 52–39, loses to Thurgood Marshall by 48–41

9. John Marshall Harlan II  loses to Louis Brandeis by 51–23, loses to Henry Friendly by 39–29

10. Richard Posner  loses to Louis Brandeis by 60–36, loses to John Marshall Harlan II by 45–31

11. Ruth Bader Ginsburg  loses to Louis Brandeis by 68–28, loses to Richard Posner by 50–39

12. Hugo Black  loses to Louis Brandeis by 58–32, loses to Richard Posner by 47–41

13. Roger Traynor  loses to Louis Brandeis by 40–20, loses to Hugo Black by 33–25

14. Robert Jackson (write-in)  loses to Louis Brandeis by 51–36, loses to Roger Traynor by 35–29

15. Felix Frankfurter  loses to Louis Brandeis by 64–24, loses to Robert Jackson (write-in) by 45–34

I suspect politics dominated quality in some of these results, but at least a lot of clearly skilled jurists made the list.  I was surprised Brandeis came out on top, rather than Hand or Cardozo, but so it goes with online polls!  Thoughts from readers welcome; submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.