Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

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."

Evidence

Rank	Name	School	Citations	Age in 2021
1	David Faigman	University of California, Hastings	310	64
2	Erin Murphy	New York University	290	48
3	Ronald J. Allen	Northwestern University	280	73
4	Jennifer Mnookin	University of California, Los Angeles	190	54
5	George Fisher	Stanford University	170	60
6	Christopher Mueller	University of Colorado, Boulder	160	78
7	Edward Cheng	Vanderbilt University	150	45
	Richard Friedman	University of Michigan	150	70
	Laird Kirkpatrick	George Washington University	150	73
	Michael Pardo	Georgetown University	150	44
		Other highly-cited scholars who work partly in this area
	Frederick Schauer	University of Virginia	1450	75
	Brian Leiter	University of Chicago	460	58
	David Bernstein	George Mason University	450	54
	Michael Saks	Arizona State University	260	74
	Jeffrey Bellin	College of William & Mary	250	48
	Lawrence Solan	Brooklyn Law School	250	69

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.)

Professor Sag presents an alternative using HeinOnLine; it is remarkably similar to the results of the Sisk study.  But Hein has more problems than the Westlaw database, ones that I would have thought are now notorious given USNews.com's flirtation with using it for an impact study.   Hein only picks up citations to articles in the Hein database.  That means books that are widely cited by law professors vanish in Hein.  And articles in economics, philosophy, political science etc. journals that are widely cited by law professors vanish in Hein.  Hein's lists of doctrinal faculty are also not reliable, as Professor Sisk discusses, below.

Professor Sisk posted a long comment on Professor Sag's blog post, which I excerpt here, since it makes sound points:

I found his paper to be a powerful endorsement of our triennial Scholarly Impact Ranking. For Professor Sag to use a different database, a different set of faculty at each school, and a different calculation method for scholarly impact —and yet to find a 95% correlation with the ranking results that we independently achieved (as Professor Sag notes in his blog post) — is rather remarkable. This should be grounds for celebrating the strong alignment between us and the confirmation yet again of the robust strength of citation-based rankings. And on top of that, Professor Sag ranks my own school, the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, way up at #11, way above the #23 that our ranking produced.

 

Unfortunately, rather than this positive and unifying message, the theme of Professor Sag’s paper is that our Leiter-Sisk Scholarly Impact Ranking is exclusionary and unfair. Fortunately, the factual assertions that draw him to that conclusion are mostly inaccurate. He suggests, for example, that we have excluded such schools as Houston, DePaul, and Seton Hall, when we simply have not. Indeed, he says in a comment to his blog post that DePaul has never been included in our study. To the contrary, DePaul has always been included in our study and, in 2015, achieved the top-third ranking. Yes, it is true that Professor Sag’s own institution, Loyola-Chicago ,was not included in this year’s study. That’s a fair grievance. In fact, we have included Loyola-Chicago in the past, where it did not approach the top third ranking. But faculties change, and, based on Professor Sag’s findings, I agree that we should include Loyola-Chicago again. And I promise we will next time around. Yes, we are that open to inclusion.

 

Our approach to including law schools for the intensive phase of study has been open and transparent. We share the list of about 100 law schools publicly before we conduct the study through the associate deans’ listserv to which every accredited law school belongs. We invite law schools that are not on the list to conduct their own citation study and share it with us. And schools do every time. While most of those schools do not end up making it into the top third ranking, that does happen on occasion. And we welcome it. And lest there be any doubt, we do a full work-up of all of these schools, meaning that this year we fully vetted the faculty rosters and did a full citation count, including sampling, etc., of all 99 schools studied.

 

To be sure, there are variations between our rankings, even though the correlation is tight overall. The reason for those variations are likely to be found in (1) different databases (we use Westlaw and Professor Sag used HeinOnline), and (2) a different point of study (we carefully verify rosters of tenured faculty with traditional scholarly expectations and Professor Sag apparently simply accepted a HeinOnline designation of “doctrinal” teaching)....

 

My greater concern is with Professor Sag’s choice of the faculty to study. Preparing, vetting, and verifying the faculty rosters is one of the most time-consuming parts of our ranking study every three years. I preside over our work on identifying which faculty members at each law school have tenure, which have traditional scholarly expectations, and which are moving to other institutions. I then transparently share those preliminary rosters with the deans at each school, asking to be informed of possible errors and learn of recent changes. We insist on making the final choice, being consistent among all law schools.

 

But Professor Sag bypasses that entire painstaking stage. He apparently includes all faculty who designate teaching in a doctrinal course, which I think then means he includes not only tenured faculty, but untenured faculty and even those who are not on tenure-track at all. In addition, several schools have confirmed to us that their tenured faculty teaching in clinics have the same scholarly expectations, and so for those schools we include tenured clinical faculty. Not Professor Sag.

 

And Professor Sag doesn’t account for recently-announced lateral moves, which often is critical. Those lateral moves are a key part of the dynamic nature of Scholarly Impact Ranking.

 

Getting the faculty rosters right is hard work for us, but it makes all the difference.

 

Moreover, Professor Sag’s paper confirms our wisdom is not trying to rank all the way down for every ABA-accredited law school. While he imposes an ordinal ranking on schools from 1 to 193, I know from looking at the mean and median data that the differences among the schools after about the one-third point (after ranking about 69 to 70) are too small to justify separation of them through a misleading ordinal ranking. It just is not fair to rank further as the differences between the school’s scholarly impact shrinks to the minuscule.

 

But let me end by again accentuating the positive. Despite all of these differences, we find again that citation-based rankings tend to bolster one another. For that, I am thankful.

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."

Civil Procedure

Rank	Name	School	Citations	Age in 2021
1	Arthur Miller	New York University	890	87
2	Judith Resnik	Yale University	840	71
3	Stephen Burbank	University of Pennsylvania	430	74
	Kevin Clermont	Cornell University	430	76
5	James Pfander	Northwestern University	370	65
6	Myriam Gilles	Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University	340	50
7	William Rubenstein	Harvard Univeristy	320	61
8	Deborah Hensler	Stanford University	300	79
9	Richard Marcus	University of California, Hastings	270	73
10	Scott Dodson	University of California, Hastings	250	48
	Linda Mullenix	University of Texas, Austin	250	71
	Runner-up for the top 10
	A. Benjamin Spencer	College of William & Mary	240	47
		Other highly-cited scholars who work partly in this area
	Erwin Chemerinsky	University of California, Berkeley	2470	68
	Geoffrey Miller	New York University	870	71
	Martin Redish	Northwestern University	870	76
	Samuel Issacharoff	New York University	830	67
	Caleb Nelson	University of Virginia	540	55

 

 

 

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.

Top 25 Law Schools by Median Scholarly Impact, 2016-2020

Median Impact Rank	School (overall impact rank)	Median impact
1	Yale University (1)	341
2	University of Chicago (2)	312
3	New York University (4)	267
4	Harvard University (3)	256
5	Columbia University (5)	218
6	Stanford University (6)	210
7	University of California, Berkeley (6)	181
8	University of Pennsylvania (8)	177
9	Duke University (12)	171
10	University of California, Los Angeles (11)	165
	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (13)	165
	University of Virginia (9)	164
	Vanderbilt University (9)	166
14	Cornell University (15)	151
15	Georgetown University (17)	144
	University of Minnesota (18)	142
17	Northwestern University (15)	132
	University of California, Irvine (14)	133
	University of Texas, Austin (18)	133
20	University of Arizona (27)	127
21	College of William & Mary (27)	124
22	Boston University (23)	119
	George Washington University (18)	120
	University of Southern California (29)	120
	University of St. Thomas (MN) (23)	120

 

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.

After learning of Ms. Braasch's history of personal and family trauma, and her psychological problems, Richard tweeted this (after several tweets about her) on September 16:

Being free of moral scruples, let alone a sense of shame, Richard then retweeted Ms. Braasch early this morning *September 23), adding a complete misrepresentation of her tweet (she is not accusing him of being part of any conspiracy, she is responding to someone else) in order to mock her and get his followers to attack her, which they did:

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.

Ms. Braasch was vilified in the media as a "racist" in in 2018 in the misnamed "napping while Black" incident at Yale:   Ms. Braasch had called campus police about an unknown person (who turned out to be Black--Ms. Braasch couldn't see who it was, a fact not reported at the time) sleeping in the common area on her floor in the middle of the night (Ms. Braasch was the only resident of that floor). Yale, in fact, withdrew racial harassment charges against Ms. Braasch, a fact which also received almost no media attention.   Yale law and philosophy professors (including Alan Schwartz and Scott Shapiro) have vouched for Ms. Braasch's character, and her commitment to racial justice and civil rights.  The journalist Cathy Young, after a thorough investigation, wrote a lengthy article about Ms. Braasch (including her history of personal and family trauma, and her past issues with safety in Yale housing), which--while hardly uncritical of Ms. Braasch--exonerated her fully from the charge of racial animus (consistent, of course, with Yale dropping the charges against her).

Richard Painter acknowledged none of these facts (despite knowing of them), and simply repeated all last week the 2018 version of the story:  racist white student calls police on student for the crime of "napping while Black."  I learned of this only because Ms. Braasch was, understandably, extremely upset to be unjustly vilified, yet again, on a large Twitter account, and so many years after the fact.  You can sense her distress in this representative Tweet:

Despite her repeated protests, Richard has continued to harass her and ignore all the facts all last week, and continuing to today.

And why?   Because Richard discovered that I had reported on the actual facts about the case, and he saw this as another opportunity to try to smear me as a racist, this time for defending Ms. Braasch.  Indeed, he's taken to misrepresenting anything else he can find--at my blog or anywhere else in cyberspace--to smear me.  I had assumed that this was because he had been deprived of his go-to lie, thanks to Professor Schwarcz, but that was too optimistic:  like Trump, once he finds a lie, he can't let it go.  For example:

Some of his Twitter followers interpreted his smear as he intended, and denounced me as a racist. (Note to Richard:  the academic freedom issue does not turn on "how many" faculty hold a dissenting view; and omitting the academic freedom context to my remark is almost as misleading as your original lie, but it obviously serves your goal of portraying me in a false light.)   He's continued to repeat the original lie since.   Indeed, he's continued to attack Braasch based on falsehoods and smear me at the same time ("the man", below, is me):

Once again, some of his followers see through his dissembling:

Attacking me is one thing, but attacking Ms. Braasch, an innocent third party, is quite another, and really is sadistic.  I've explained to her that in the legal academic community, Richard has a well-deserved reputation for being a "loon" (as more than one law professor wrote me last week), a reputation that apparently preceded his turning his "Sauron-like eye" in my direction (to quote another law professor's amusing quip).   That, however, is little consolation to Ms. Braasch, who will be trying to get academic jobs, while still trying to clear her name from the media storm of 2018.  Richard just helped make the latter task harder, while also causing Ms. Braasch significant emotional distress.  That's really despicable.

What an embarrassment for the University of Minnesota.

ADDENDUM:  This sums up this sorry spectacle quite well:

Top 15 Law Schools by "Per Capita" Placement of Graduates as Supreme Court (SCOTUS) clerks in the last five years

This covers the October terms 2017 through 2021.  Only schools with at least two clerks placed during this time period are listed.  The "per capita" rate is the total number of clerks divided by the typical size of a graduating class in recent years, based on ABA data (and rounded to the nearest 25).   Below the fold, the total number of clerks for all schools with at least one SCOTUS clerk during this period are listed.

Rank	School	Per Capita rate	Total clerks 2017-2021
1	Yale University	.29	57
2	University of Chicago	.13	25
3	Harvard University	.07	38
	Stanford University	.07	14
5	New York University	.02	7
	University of Michigan	.02	6
	University of Notre Dame	.02	3
	University of Virginia	.02	5
9	Columbia University	.01	5
	Duke University	.01	3
	George Washington University	.01	4
	Northwestern University	.01	2
	University of California, Berkeley	.01	4
	Vanderbilt University	.01	2

 

School (avg. class size to nearest 25)	Total clerks, 2017-2021
Yale University (200)	57
Harvard University (550)	38
University of Chicago (200)	25
Stanford University (200)	14
New York University (450)	7
University of Michigan (375)	6
Columbia University (400)	5
University of Virginia (325)	5
George Washington University (500)	4
University of California, Berkeley (325)	4
Duke University (225)	3
University of Notre Dame (175)	3
Northwestern University (250)	2
Vanderbilt University (175)	2

The following schools each had one graduate clerk on SCOTUS during the 2017-2021 terms:  Georgetown University; University of Texas, Austin; Brigham Young University; University of Florida, Gainesville; Cornell University; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Mississippi; Pepperdine University; Ohio State University; Louisiana State University.

Victory for academic freedom at the University of Toronto (UPDATED)

After an offer on the law faculty was blocked as a result of outside political interference, the University of Toronto was censured by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT).  CAUT has now "paused" the censure, since the University has now offered the position to the candidate previously blocked. 

UPDATE:  The censure is only "paused" because it's not yet clear whether the University of Toronto will protect the offeree's academic freedom in the face of harassment from outside groups.

(Thanks to Mohan Matthen for the pointer.)

9/18/21 UPDATE:   This is not so good:

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), which imposed the censure in April, says it has called for a pause on the measure after it says the school met one of its key demands: to re-offer the position of director of the school's International Human Rights Program to Valentina Azarova....

After careful consideration, the CAUT says, Azarova has declined the offer.

"Her decision, while unfortunate, is understandable given the University's initial reaction to the unfounded and scurrilous attacks on her reputation and her research," CAUT said in a statement Friday.

In a statement to CBC News, Azarova confirmed that while the the school negotiated "in good faith and extended academic freedom protections to the position, there were important uncertainties that could not be resolved."

"In light of events over the past year, I realized that my leadership of the program would remain subject to attack by those who habitually conflate legal analyses of the Israeli-Palestinian context with hostile partisanship. I also understood that the university would not be in a position to remove these hazards," said Azarova, a research fellow at the University of Manchester. 

Azarova added she is "sincerely grateful" for the support of the academics, students and communities who expressed their concern and is  inspired by their commitment....

[CAUT] says the full censure will not be formally lifted until the university addresses other key aspects of the case and explicitly extends academic freedom protections to academic managerial positions and develops policies to prohibit donor interference in internal academic affairs.

A final decision on whether to lift the censure will be up to the CAUT council when it meets in November.