Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Top 40 law faculties in terms of scholarly distinction, 2022

So with about 500 participants and nearly 70,000 votes on paired comparisons, here are the results.  The number in parentheses indicates how many times out of 100 comparisons the school prevailed. 

US News overall rank continued to exercise a strong, but not always dominant, influence.  Several law schools outperformed their US News rank:  e.g., Harvard (#4 in US News), NYU (#7), UCLA (#15), Forhdam (#37),  UC Irvine (#37), Indiana/Bloomington (#43), Wisconsin (#43), Arizona (#45), Colorado (#49), Cardozo (#52), San Diego (#64), Brooklyn (#98).  Others noticeably underperformed:  e.g., Stanford (#2 in US News), Penn (#6 in US News), Alabama (#25).  Indeed, several law schools in the U.S. News top 40 were outside the top 40 in this survey:  Florida (#21), BYU (#23), Georgia (#29), Arizona State (#30), George Mason (#30).  (I was a bit surprised some of these didn't make the top 40 in this survey.)

Here are the top 40:

1.  Harvard University (96)

2.  Yale University (94)

3.  University of Chicago (91)

4.  Columbia University (90)

4.  New York University (90)

4.  Stanford University (90)

7.  University of California, Berkeley (88)

8.  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (87)

9.  University of Virginia (86)

10. University of Pennsylvania (85)

11. Duke University (79)

12. University of California, Los Angeles (78)

13. Georgetown University (77)

14. Cornell University (76)

14. Northwestern University (76)

16. University of Texas, Austin (75)

17. Vanderbilt University (69)

18. University of Southern California (66)

19. Boston University (63)

19. Washington University, St. Louis (63)

21. University of California, Irvine (59)

21. University of Minnesota (59)

23. Fordham University (57)

23. George Washington University (57)

25. Emory University (55)

26. University of Notre Dame (54)

27. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (52)

28. University of Wisconsin, Madison (51)

29. University of Iowa (50)

30. University of California, Davis (47)

31. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (46)

32. Boston College (43)

32. Ohio State University (43)

34. College of William & Mary (42)

34. Indiana University, Bloomington (42)

36. Cardozo Law School/Yeshiva University (40)

36. University of San Diego (40)

38. University of Colorado, Boulder (38)

39. University of Arizona (37)

40. Brooklyn Law School (36)

40. University of Alabama (36)

Runners-up to the top 40:  UC Hastings (35), Arizona State University (35), Florida State (34), Washington/Seattle (34).

Rank the top 40 law faculties in terms of scholarly distinction via pairwise comparison

Instead of the condorcet method, this year we'll try the pairwise comparison methodology.  Remember:  scholarly strength of the faculty is the criterion, not U.S. News.   (There are about 65 schools in the database, based mostly, but not entirely, on the Sisk impact study.  Only "the top 40" will be posted on the blog.)

Have fun!

 

 

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