Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

10 most cited Family Law faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023 (CORRECTED AGAIN)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited family law faculty in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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, 2024-25

These are non-clinical/non-LRW appointments that will take effect in summer or fall 2025 (except where noted); (new additions will be in bold.)  Last year's list is here.

 

*Devon Carbado (criminal procedure, constitutional law, Critical Race Theory) from the University of California, Los Angeles to New York University (effective January 2025).

 

*Anne Maria Lofaso (labor & employment law) from West Virginia University to the University of Cincinnati (effective January 2025).

 

*Mary-Rose Papandrea (First Amendment, media law) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill to George Washington University.

 

*Gregory Shill (corporate, securities regulation, transportation law & policy) from the University of Iowa to Arizona State University.

 

*Charles Tyler (federal courts, constitutional law, civil procedure) from George Washington University to the University of California, Irvine (effective January 2025).

 

*Rebecca Wexler (evidence, law & technology, criminal law & procedure) from the University of California, Berkeley to Columbia University.

 

*Richard Winchester (tax, corporate) from Seton Hall University to Brooklyn Law School (effective January 2025).

Multi-million dollar budget deficit at George Mason Law

The Blog Emperor has the details.  Those are some big numbers!  Their Dean Ken Randall is experienced and savvy (he oversaw Alabama's rise to distinction in the early 2000s), but will have his work cut out for him.

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Just a note that you can advertise exclusively on this blog--information here.  Traffic this fall should be especially strong with new "most cited' lists coming out most weeks for the next few months.

20 most cited Corporate Law & Securities Regulation faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law corporate law & securities faculty in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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 new timetable of the law school hiring market

Because I've been working with Chicago alums and fellows on the teaching market since 2008 (and doing the same at UT Austin before that), I've been witness to the changing timetable since the pandemic killed the "meat market" in Washington, DC (thank goodness!) and Zoom took over. 

Here's my perception, but I've opened comments for different perspectives and input (please use your full name and a valid email address):

1.  Schools start scheduling interview within a week of the FAR forms being released, especially for candidates with strong credentials that meet their hiring needs.  (Caveat: the selection bias in my sample is that I'm dealing with Chicago alums and Fellows.)  Bear in mind that 80-85% of schools every year are hiring to fill pressing curricular needs; only a minority are doing pure "best athlete" hiring.

2.  By this time (i.e., roughly a month after the FAR is released), there are relatively few screeners being scheduled, except by elite law schools, which take their time.

3.  Also by this time, the candidates who are successful at screener interviews are getting callbacks, though the rate varies:   25% yield (sometimes higher) for the strongest candidates, lower for others (many of whom will go on to get jobs!).

4.  Some schools begin making offers in October, which was almost unheard of under the old system. 

5.  Despite the preceding generalizations, candidates get screener invitations well into October (and not only from elite schools), and callbacks and offers of jobs still extend well into February and March.

Please submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.  Remember:  full name and valid email address (the latter will not appear). Thank you.

Academic freedom abolished at Penn

The University of Pennsylvania has sanctioned Amy Wax for her offensive extramural speech, even though it is clearly protected under the applicable AAUP standards governing extramural speech (earlier coverage).  (The sanction does not involve revocation of tenure, but rather a substantial financial penalty.  I assume Professor Wax will sue for breach of contract.)   As the FIRE statement correctly puts it:

After years of promising it would find a way to punish professor Amy Wax for her controversial views on race and gender, Penn delivered today — despite zero evidence Wax ever discriminated against her students.

Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn's willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor. After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook. 

But academic freedom is designed to protect controversial faculty from being punished for their speech or opinions. In an era when political forces right and left are all too eager to sanitize campuses of voices and views they dislike, faculty nationwide must be able to rely on the time-tested principles of academic freedom.

UPDATE:  The Academic Freedom Alliance statement on Penn's sanction of Wax.

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10 most cited Tax Law faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law tax law faculty in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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 Law & Philosophy faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited law faculty in law & philosophy in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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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More controversy at Berkeley Law

Students are protesting a class on "anti-semitism and law" by leading corporate law expert Steven Davidoff Solomon, primarily because of an op-ed he wrote encouraging employers not to hire his "anti-semitic" students.  Let me comment on this purely from the standpoint of the academic freedom rights of faculty:  (1) Davidoff's op-ed was inappropriate:  as we noted in the Amy Wax case, faculty have no academic freedom right to destroy the professional prospects of their students based on gross generalizations; (2) students at a public university have a constitutional right to protest a class, but not in the class itself; disruption of the class itself should be grounds for discipline.

15 most cited Law & Social Science faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the fifteen most-cited law faculty in "law & social science" (excluding economics; including "law & society," "empirical legal studies," sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology) in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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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Michigan Law wins summary judgment in discrimination lawsuit brought by faculty member

We noted the case two years ago, and it has now been resolved in favor of the University of Michigan Law School and its former Dean Mark West.  The court describes emails from Dean West to Professor Beny "as immature, awkward, and unprofessional, but likely not harassing," but also held that, "The undisputed facts in this record show that the defendants took disciplinary action against the plaintiff because of her disruptive and unprofessional conduct, and not because of her race or sex or because she engaged in protected activity."  (For some examples, see the emails described at pages 9-10.)  The complaint airs a lot of other dirty laundry, as seemed inevitable given that Professor Beny alleged differential treatment of her compared to other faculty who were alleged (or found) to have engaged in unprofessional conduct.

Interesting initiative to increase legal services in rural areas...

...from the University of Georgia. Other flagships in states with under-served rural communities may want to take a look at this.

15 most cited Law & Economics faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the fifteen most-cited law faculty in law & economics (including behavioral law & economics) in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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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Citation lists going forward (IMPORTANT UPDATE)

Going forward, I won't produce any "most cited" ordinal lists in specialty areas when the citation total for the five-year period is below 300.  Partly this is for reasons of time, but partly it is that I'm skeptical that as the citation numbers get smaller, ordinal differences are very meaningful.   That means for some of the "low citation" fields, I'll be more likely to list "top five" than "top ten."  As in the past, I will also list up to five highly cited scholars who work partly in the field in question, but only if they have more citations than the least-cited scholar on the ordinal list (e.g., the 5th, 10th or 20th-cited scholar). 

A further difficulty is that Sisk et al. were not able to correct this time for et al. citations to multi-author casebooks, which matters in areas like torts and property.  So I may not do those lists at all this time around.

More "most cited" lists coming soon.

UPDATE:   Thoughtful advice from a Dean elsewhere persuaded me that limiting the most-cited lists, as I proposed above, was a disservice to younger (and thus, on average, more diverse) scholars, since the tops of the lists are dominated by faculty in their 50s, 60s and 70s (with occasional exceptions).  Given the importance these lists have acquired, it seems worth the extra effort to make them reasonably complete.  This means it will take longer to produce them, and there will probably be increased need to post "corrected" lists, since oversights at the bottom of each list are more likely.  I appreciate those readers who take time to send corrections, and I am grateful for constructive advice like that from the Dean who persuaded me my original plan was a mistake.

Curricular areas of interest to hiring committees, 24-25

Northwestern's Professor Lawsky has collected some very interesting information.  It's too bad we don't have data for earlier years, so I can only report my anecdotal sense.  This is a good year for "business law," but every year is a good year for the business law subjects.   It seems like a comparatively good year for three areas in particular:  evidence, labor & employment law, and family law.  Health law has been on a steady rise, it has seemed to me, and that continues this year (although one would like to know how many of these jobs are more bioethics, and how many are more the regulatory side of health law [the latter being the crucial area in practice]).

20 most cited Administrative and/or Environmental Law faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023 (CORRECTED)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law faculty in administrative and/or environmental law in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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."  (Note that Ricky Revesz, who was #1 last time, is currently in government service, so was not part of the Sisk study.)

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Books

Forgive the navel-gazing here, but perhaps some readers will be interested in some of the three books of mine that have appeared this year.

(1)  Marx, co-authored with Jaime Edwards, has just appeared.   Here's what the political philosopher Allen Buchanan (emeritus, Duke University; Laureate Professor, University of Arizona; author of Marx and Justice:  The Radical Critique of Liberalism [1982], among many other books) had to say about it:

A tour de force. Not only the best available introduction to Marx’s thought and to post-Marx Marxist theories, but also of interest to specialists. The organization is excellent, and the writing is always clear and jargon-free. It covers all the main topics that a book on Marx should address. It is remarkably fair and balanced, sympathetic to Marx’s ideas, but also appropriately critical of them.

You can read other reactions to the book here, including a lengthy excerpt from a referee report that gives a good sense of the volume.

(2) The fifth volume of Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Law, which I edit with Leslie Green, will be available next month.  It includes new essays on philosophy of tort, criminal, and international law; on French legal realism and Bulygin's jurisprudence; and a variety of topics in general jurisprudence.  The authors are an international group of scholars from New Zealand, Singapore, France, Argentina, the U.K., as well as the United States.

(3)  For any Spanish readers, Teoría del derecho realista:  Ensayos selectos is a Spanish translation by the Mexican legal philosopher Francisco M. Mora-Sifuente of eight of my articles on realist jurisrpudence and related themes; it includes a new preface by me, and an introduction to my work by Dr. Natalia Scavuzzo from the University of Genoa (the leading center of Italian legal realism).  The book was published earlier this year by Zela Grupo Editorial, the leading South American publisher of legal philosophy.  (The essays translated are:  "What is a Realist Theory of Law?"; "Legal Realism and Legal Doctrine"; "Legal Realisms, Old and New"; "In Praise of Realism (and Against 'Nonsense' Jurisprudence)"; "Explaining Theoretical Disagreement"; "Constitutional Law, Moral Judgment and the Supreme Court as Super-Legislature"; "The Roles of Judges in Democracies:  A Realistic View"; and "The Paradoxes of Public Philosophy.")