Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices Physically Assaulting Each Other?

This is really weird!  I gather it's now a police matter.  Even faculty don't do this kind of stuff to each other!

Law School Enrollments and Jobs for Lawyers

The numbers are not pretty.

The Most Important American Judges of the 20th-Century

As we enter the dog days of summer, we might as well do a new poll for some amusement.  This time readers are asked to rank order the most important American judges of the 20th-century.  No doubt I've missed some really good ones, but hopefully there are enough of the major federal and state judges to make the list worthwhile.  Only judges who did most of their important work in the 20th-century *and* who are no longer living were eligible.   Have fun!  I'll leave this poll open through July 4th.

In Memoriam: Anne Dupre

Anne Proffitt Dupre, the J. Alton Hosch Professor of law at the University of Georgia, passed away last week.  She was 58.  Dupre, a UGA graduate and clerk to Justice Blackmun, joined the law school in 1994.  She was an expert in education law and published Speaking Up: The Unintended Costs of Free Speech in Public Schools in 2009.

Hiring Chairs for 2011-12...

...may announce themselves here, as well as their hiring priorities, if any, for the year.

Visiting Professors at the Top Law Schools, 2011-12--3rd Draft

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 9--WITH REVISIONS

As I've done before, I'm posting a list of the visiting professors (who hold university appointments elsewhere) at the top six law schools, the schools that are "top six" by almost all measures of faculty quality--which are also the schools that also typically have the most visiting professors on a regular basis.  While many visiting stints are made with an eye to possible permanent appointment, not all are; some are so-called "podium" visits, which aim to fill an immediate teaching need at the school.   By my calculation, for example, less than 10% of the visits last year resulted in (or are in process of resulting in) offers of permanent employment--but a somewhat higher percentage of the non-podium visits resulted in such offers.  Often visitors from local schools in the area are invited for podium visit purposes--though some "locals" may also be "look-see" visitors, i.e., under consideration for appointment.  NYU also has a fair number of "enrichment" and "global" visitors, well-known senior folks who are keen to spend some time in New York, but who aren't necessarily interested in, or being considered for, lateral moves.  (Columbia gets some of these folks too.)  From the outside, of course, it's very hard to tell all these apart, so here, without further comment, are the visiting professors for 2011-12; please e-mail me about omissions or corrections, and I will update the list at various intervals over the next couple of months and move it to the front.

Please note that not every visit, below, is for the entire academic year; indeed, my guess is at least half are not, meaning students can expect many of these faculty to *also* be teaching at their home institution.  In the case of HLS, many of the visitors come in the Winter Term, i.e., just the month of January.

Please also note that this is supposed to be a list of visiting faculty who have gone through some kind of appointments process at the school at which they are visiting, whether a process for look-see visitors, "enrichment" visitors, or podium visitors.  These are supposed to be faculty who are teaching at the host school and who are being paid by the host school to teach.

Yale Law School

Aharon Barak (Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya & Hebrew U, Jerusalem)

Barton Beebe (New York University)

Hanoch Dagan (Tel-Aviv University)

Stanley Fish (Florida International University)

Lani Guinier (Harvard University)

Daniel Ho (Stanford University)

Pamela Karlan (Stanford University)

Sanford Levinson (University of Texas, Austin)

Jeffrey Meyer (Quinnipiac University)

Samuel Moyn (Columbia University [History])

Gerald Torres (University of Texas, Austin)

Harvard Law School

Robert Anderson (University of Washington, Seattle)

Devon Carbado (University of California, Los Angeles)

Martha Chamallas (Ohio State University)

Sharon Dolovich (University of California, Los Angeles)

Gillian Hadfield (University of Southern California)

Keith Hylton (Boston University)

John Leshy (University of California, Hastings)

Sanford Levinson (University of Texas, Austin)

Yair Listokin (Yale University)

Vlad Perju (Boston College)

Peter Rubin (Georgetown University)

Adam Samaha (University of Chicago)

Peter Shane (Ohio State University)

Charles Silver (University of Texas, Austin)

Michael Stein (College of William & Mary)

Kristen Stilt (Northwestern University)

David Strauss (University of Chicago)

Michael Trebilcock (University of Toronto)

David Walker (Boston University)

University of Chicago Law School

Eric Biber (University of California, Berkeley)

Eduardo Penalver (Cornell University)

Ariel Porat (Tel-Aviv University)

Albert Yoon (University of Toronto)

Stanford Law School

Nita Farahany (Vanderbilt University)

Siegfried Fina (University of Vienna)

Edward Larson (Peppperdine University)

Robert MacCoun (University of California, Berkeley)

Avishai Margalit (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

Peter Menell (University of California, Berkeley)

Rogelia Perez-Perdomo (Universidad Metropolitana, Venezuela)

William Simon (Columbia University) (also emeritus, Stanford)

David Sklansky (University of California, Berkeley)

Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard University)

Columbia Law School

Akhil Amar (Yale University)

Richard Bonnie (University of Virginia)

Anu Bradford (University of Chicago)

Gilles Cuniberti (University of Luxembourg)

Dennis Curtis (Yale University)

Katharina de la Durantaye (Humbold University/St. John's University)

Mihir Desai (Harvard University)

Sharon Hannes (Tel Aviv University)

Ricardo Hausmann (Harvard University [Kennedy School])

Martti Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki)

Rebecca Kysar (Brooklyn Law School)

Alexandra Lahav (University of Connecticut)

Tracey Meares (Yale University)

Michele Papa (University of Florence)

Guy Pessach (Hebrew University, Jersualem)

Judith Resnik (Yale University)

Alan Schwartz (Yale University)

Anthony Sebok (Cardozo Law School)

Pablo Spiller (University of California, Berkeley--Business School)

New York University School of Law

Brian Arnold (University of Western Ontario)

Alan Auerbach (University of California, Berkeley)

Mitchell Engler (Cardozo Law School)

Daniel Ernst (Georgetown University)

Ran Hirschl (University of Toronto)

Dan Ho (Stanford University)

Yair Listokin (Yale University)

Phoebe Okawa (Queen Mary, University of London)

Robert Rabin (Stanford University)

Edward Rock (University of Pennsylvania)

Pamela Samuelson (University of California, Berkeley)

David Scheicher (George Mason university)

Neil Walker (University of Edinburgh)

ADDENDUM:  One reader queried why Chicago usually has fewer visitors than the others.  There are two main reasons.  First, our full-time faculty is, to start, the smallest of the six--less than half the size of Harvard and NYU, for example, and a third smaller than the others.  Second, we almost never have podium visitors.

In Memoriam: Frederica Lombard

Professor Emeritus Freddie Lombard, of the Wayne State School of Law, passed away last week.  She joined the Wayne State faculty in 1966 - joining a very small cadre of female law faculty in the country.    She served as interim dean of the law school from 2003-04.

"The Demarcation Problem in Jurisprudence: A New Case for Skepticism"--the (Almost) Final Version

There may be some mostly cosmetic changes before publication, but otherwise this is the essentially final version, which will appear in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies next year.  The core argument remains the same as in the earlier version from last year, though there have been some significant revisions to portions of the paper in light of useful comments from an OJLS referee and from participants in the McMaster "Nature of Law" conference.  This version can be quoted and cited.

In Memoriam: Norman Redlich

Dean Emeritus Norman Redlich, of NYU Law School, died last week.   Redlich, who served as dean from 1975-88, presided over a significant era of growth at NYU - one that included the hiring of both President John Sexton and Dean Ricky Revesz.  An extensive obit covering his significant legal career can be found in the NYT.  Redlich oversaw the construction of two of my own former residences - D’Agostino Hall and the Mercer Street Residence. He also built a pricey, controversial, and attractive central library staircase that generated the following Law Revue lyric (sung inevitably to Jesus Christ Superstar):

Norman R, Superstar, taught us the law so we'd pass the bar;  He's the dean, law machine, best damn staircase we've ever seen.

He was 85.

Kathryn Rand Named Dean at North Dakota

The University of North Dakota School of Law has announced that Kathryn Rand, a member of the UND law faculty, will be taking over as the permanent dean.  She has been serving as interim dean for the past two years.  Rand is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and has been a professor at UND Law  since 2000.