Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

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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Top 25 law schools based on MEDIAN scholarly impact, 2021

The Sisk rankings of law schools by scholarly impact, gives more weight to mean impact than median impact (the overall scores is based on 2x the mean impact plus 1x the median impact).  One reason it is interesting to look solely at median impact is that it tells us something about scholarly impact at a school:  very roughly, schools that rank higher by median impact than they do in the overal impact ranking are schools with a "strong middle" of productive, impactful faculty, but not as many citation stars; by contrast, schools that rank lower by median impact than they in the overall impact ranking are schools being carried by their citation stars, as it were.

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Richard Painter, the man "without a moral compass"

A brief follow-up on this post earlier in the week, about Richard Painter's harassment of an innocent third party, Sarah Braasch, based on falsehoods (Richard lies a lot)--below the fold, for anyone interested.

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Samuel Moyn (Yale) vs. defenders of the late Michael Ratner (including Katherine Franke [Columbia])

Here.  I have found Moyn's work quite interesting, but the criticisms of Ratner do seem unfair.

More "most-cited' lists coming over the next month or so

Those lists will include the most-cited faculty writing in evidence, health law, election law, critical theories of law, torts and insurance law, civil procedure, family law, legal ethics/legal profession, antitrust, and perhaps some others, but at least these.  Thanks for your interest and patience.

Richard Painter (Minnesota) now attacking Sarah Braasch, a vulnerable and traumatized young woman, and only because I had defended her

Apologies to readers bored with this malevolent buffoon, but Richard Painter's latest stunt is even more despicable than trying to smear some of my colleagues as racists based on nothing.  It, at least, presents an opportunity to air the actual facts about the target of Richard's harassment, Sarah Braasch (a lawyer who is now a PhD student in philosophy at Yale). I asked Ms. Braasch whether she was OK with me exposing his malicious and dishonest behavior, and she said she was.  I have no doubt--since Richard appears to be without a moral compass--that he will attack her (and of course me) again. [UPDATE:  As expected.]  But the truth should prevail.

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30 Most-Cited Public Law (excluding constitutional & election law) Faculty in the U.S., 2016-2020 (CORRECTED)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the thirty most-cited law faculty working in public law, excluding constitutional law and election law (a top ten lists forthcoming), 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).  This broad category includes faculty writing about administrative law, environmental law, legislation, regulation, and immigration law.  Many (but certainly not all) faculty on this list work in more than one of those areas, making distinguishing the sub-fields sometimes harder to do.  Because this includes so many fields, we list the 30 most-cited scholars.  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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