Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Lawsky's (final) entry level hiring report for 2022

Here (earlier version).   118 tenure-track hires last year, at 75 schools!  That's the highest number in a decade, although still short of the 150+ figure most years prior to the Great Recession.

Florida lawyers take position in court that public university faculty curricula and classroom speech are "government speech," so regulable by state

Those thinking about taking jobs in the Florida public university system will want to watch this case.  If it makes it to SCOTUS, we may find out if Garcetti extends to faculty at public universities; if it does that will be the end of academic freedom at public universities.

Some very odd behavior by student editors at the Iowa Law Review

Lawprof Ramsi Woodcock (Kentucky) reports his experience.  Short version:  he was late turning in the final version of his article, so the Law Review insisted they would publish the earlier version, over his objections!   There are other twists and turns in this saga, but the student editors did not handle the situation properly. They can certainly reject an article that is not revised by the deadline, but they have no right to publish something the author does not want published.

UPDATE:  On Twitter, Professor Kerr (Berkeley) comes to the defense of the student editors.

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.

 

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

 

*Vikram Amar (constutional 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).

 

*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).

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

*Courtney Joslin (constitutional law law & sexuality, employment discrimination) from the University of California, Davis to George Washington University.

 

*Shu-Yi Oei (tax) from Boston College to Duke University (effective January 2023).

USNews.com compared to other metrics of school quality

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 30, 2022

Here's the USNews.com "top ten", with other data on these schools.

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 all metrics
1	Yale University	1	3	1	3	1.8
2	Stanford University	6	10	3	1	4.4
3	University of Chicago	2	1	2	3	2.2
4	Columbia University	5	9	9	3	6.0
4	Harvard University	3	2	3	1	2.6
6	University of Pennsylvania	8	14	15	8	10.2
7	New York University	4	5	5	3	4.8
8	University of Virginia	9	5	5	8	7.0
9	University of California, Berkeley	6	7	9	7	7.6
10	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	13	13	5	8	9.8

71 applicants in the 2nd FAR distribution from the AALS...

...compared to 39 last year.  Probably the attention accorded to the astonishingly low number of applicants in the first distribution in August inspired a few latecomers to enter the market.

Top 95 law faculty ranked by D-Index

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 8--ONE CORRECTION (Prof. Helfer [Duke] was not listed with Duke in the database).

The earlier reference to a ranking of chemists in connection with my post about ranking of law faculty with Google Scholar pages by H-Index was a bit misleading:  the ranking of chemists alluted to was by their D-Index, that is their H-Index but only in discipline-specific journals.  Even in the cases of the chemists, though, it's not always clear how the discipline-specific journals are being defined (many important chemists show up in the "Biology and Biochemistry" category, including faculty whose work is pretty squarely in other fields, like analytical chemsitry.)

But this same resource offers a ranking of law faculty by their D-Index, except the field is defined as "Law and Political Science."  Since law is lumped with political science, unsurprisingly, faculty whose work is interdisciplinary with the social sciences do quite well here.  Once again, the health law fields (including bioethics) are also well-represented.   By contrast, constitutional law scholars that are highly cited in the law reviews do not fare nearly as well here, suggesting there weren’t that many student-edited law reviews in the database.  Consider, too, that according to this database, Ronald Dworkin has a D-index of only 34, Hans Kelsen of 31, and H.L.A. Hart of 23--so there is a strong "presentism" bias in the results.  (The database also includes a lot of retired or deceased faculty:  see, e.g., the ranking of University of Chicago in “Law and Political Science.”)

Some law professors also appear in other categories, such as “Humanities & Social Science” (e.g., Martha Nussbaum [Chicago], D-Index of 89) and “Economics” (e.g., W. Kip Viscusi [Vanderbilt], D-Index of 84; Alan Auebach [Berkeley], D-index of 79; James Hines [Michigan], D-Index of 64).  It’s clear the databases differ in the journals covered.  So, e.g., Lucian Bebchuk (Harvard) appears in both Law & Political Science (D-index of 59) and Economics (D-index of 79), as does Steven Shavell (Harvard) (62 in Law & Political Science, 64 in Economics).   For purposes of comparison, I list below only the results for the “Law and Political Science” database, since it also looks like the databases are of very different sizes.

What follows are the 95 non-emeritus law faculty with a D-index of at least 20 in the "Law and Political Science" database.

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Visiting Professors at the top six law schools, 2022-23

I haven't run one of these in awhile; here are the "visiting professors" in doctrinal subjects (some are "look-see" visitors, others "podium," i.e., filling a teaching need) at the top six law schools, who also invite the most visitors.  All are visiting from the law school of their home institutions, unless otherwise noted.  Only those visiting from another academic institution (as opposed, e.g., to practice) are listed:

Columbia University

Katherine Barnes (University of Arizona)

Eyal Benvenisti (Cambridge University)

Martin Flaherty (Fordham University)

Anjum Gupta (Rutgers University)

Clare Huntington (Fordham University)

Brian Langille (University of Toronto)

Thomas Lee (Fordham University)

Eliav Lieblich (Tel-Aviv University)

Moran Ofir (Radner Law School [Israel])

Ashira Ostrow (Hofstra University)

Alessio Pacces (University of Amsterdam)

Fred Smith (Emory University)

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"Feedburner" is defunct

For those who enjoy receiving blog posts delivered to your email account each day, I'm sorry to report that the service known as Feedburner has been discontinued by Google.  As an alternative, you can use an RSS reader, and still subscribe to this blog via Feedly, NewsBlur, or Inoreader.

In Memoriam: David Lieberman (1953-2022)

MOVING TO FRONT FROM SEPTEMBER 13--UPDATED

A longtime member of the Jurisprudence & Social Policy faculty at Berkeley's law school, Professor Lieberman had only retired earlier this year.  He was well-known for his contributions to legal history, especially the intellectual history of legal theory.  There is more at the Legal History Blog from legal historian Dan Ernst (Georgetown).  I will add links to memorial notices when they appear.

UPDATE:   A memorial page from the JSP program, along with remembrances from friends, colleagues and former students.  (Thanks to Chris Kutz for the pointer.)

Changes in federal clerkship placement at 8 leading law schools, 2013-2020

I only recently came across this interesting data via Derek Muller (Iowa).

In Memoriam: Michael L. Wachter (1943-2022)

A longtime member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty, where he was emeritus, Professor Wachter was well-known for his contributions to labor law and economics and, more recently, corporate law scholarship.  The Penn memorial notice is here.

(Thanks to Matt Lister for the pointer.)

Blast from the past: John Yoo and academic freedom

Back in 2008.  The general points about academic freedom certainly remain relevant.

Bigelow Fellowship at Chicago now accepting applications

Those interested in law teaching with strong qualifications can apply here.   Bigelow Fellows are fully immersed into the intellectual culture of the Law School and receive excellent mentoring.   The Bigelow is the most powerful credential on the law teaching market, and Bigelows are in demand every year.  Every Bigelow in the last nineteen years has received one or more tenure-track job offers.  You can see a full list of Bigelow alumni here.

On Deaning while stuttering

Interesting, endearing, and very personal reflections from the Blog Emperor himself.

Michigan lawprof sues university, law school, and Dean West...

...for discrimination on the basis of race, gender, disability, and family status.  Some of the allegations about discriminatory conduct are very vague and conclusory, and hard to assess; others are quite specific, such as about deviations from an allegedly lockstep salary structure to the disadvantage of plaintiff, and  allegations about shockingly inappropriate emails sent by Dean West to the plaintiff.  Paragraphs 50, 65 ff., 71, and 74 of the complaint make clear that there was considerable tension between plaintiff and the Law School over a period of years, with the Law School alleging misconduct by the plaintiff on more than one occasion, while the plaintiff claims these were retaliatory actions by the school for protected conduct (such as advocating for diversity).  If this gets to discovery, it will be extremely embarrassing either for the Law School or the plaintiff, and perhaps both.