Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

15 most cited Law & Social Science faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the fifteen most-cited law faculty in "law & social science" (excluding economics; including "law & society," "empirical legal studies," sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology) in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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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15 most cited Law & Economics faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the fifteen most-cited law faculty in law & economics (including behavioral law & economics) in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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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Citation lists going forward (IMPORTANT UPDATE)

Going forward, I won't produce any "most cited" ordinal lists in specialty areas when the citation total for the five-year period is below 300.  Partly this is for reasons of time, but partly it is that I'm skeptical that as the citation numbers get smaller, ordinal differences are very meaningful.   That means for some of the "low citation" fields, I'll be more likely to list "top five" than "top ten."  As in the past, I will also list up to five highly cited scholars who work partly in the field in question, but only if they have more citations than the least-cited scholar on the ordinal list (e.g., the 5th, 10th or 20th-cited scholar). 

A further difficulty is that Sisk et al. were not able to correct this time for et al. citations to multi-author casebooks, which matters in areas like torts and property.  So I may not do those lists at all this time around.

More "most cited" lists coming soon.

UPDATE:   Thoughtful advice from a Dean elsewhere persuaded me that limiting the most-cited lists, as I proposed above, was a disservice to younger (and thus, on average, more diverse) scholars, since the tops of the lists are dominated by faculty in their 50s, 60s and 70s (with occasional exceptions).  Given the importance these lists have acquired, it seems worth the extra effort to make them reasonably complete.  This means it will take longer to produce them, and there will probably be increased need to post "corrected" lists, since oversights at the bottom of each list are more likely.  I appreciate those readers who take time to send corrections, and I am grateful for constructive advice like that from the Dean who persuaded me my original plan was a mistake.

20 most cited Administrative and/or Environmental Law faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023 (CORRECTED)

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law faculty in administrative and/or environmental law in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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."  (Note that Ricky Revesz, who was #1 last time, is currently in government service, so was not part of the Sisk study.)

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20 most cited Constitutional Law faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the twenty most-cited law faculty in constitutional law in the U.S. for the period 2019-2023 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 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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Ten most cited law faculty in the U.S., 2019-2023

Based on the latest Sisk data, here are the ten most-cited active law professors in the U.S. for the period 2016-2020 (inclusive) (remember that the data was collected in late May/early June of 2024, and that the pre-2024 database did expand a bit since then).  Numbers are rounded to the nearest ten.  (Law professors not teaching in 2024-25--e.g.,those who are now retired, in government service, etc.--are not included [faculty merely on sabbatical are counted].)

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Top 50 U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact, 2024

Professor Greg Sisk & colleagues at the University of St. Thomas have updated their scholarly impact rankings (last edition), looking at mean and median citations to tenured faculty scholarship for the years 2019-2023 inclusive, using fall 2024 faculty rosters as the benchmark (so, e.g., faculty on indefinite leave in government service are not counted).  (Sisk et al. studied 100 faculties and ranked 64; I print the top 50 below, but the full rankings are available in their article.)  The weighted score represents the sum of the mean citations for the tenured faculty times 2, plus the faculty median.  Where the median is low relative to the immediate competition that's an indicator that a few highly cited faculty are carrying the school; in other cases, where the median is quite high, it's an indicator of more across-the-boards scholarly impact.  By noting age, one can see that some faculties are heavily dependent on their most senior members for their citations.  Ties reflect the normalized weighted scores.

The citation counts were done in late May/early June of this year in the Westlaw law journals database as follows:  TE(Brian /2 Leiter) and date (aft 2018) and date (bef 2024).  "TE" limited the results to the body of the text, thus eliminating references to names in acknowledgments.  Although the searches were done in late spring/early summer, it's clear the pre-2024 database expanded slightly after then .  Across whole schools this won't matter, since the database was relatively stable during the window when the data was collected.   Professor Sisk & colleagues this year took extra steps to include authors in et al. cites (the details are in their article).

Citations to faculty scholarship in law journals are, of course, only one metric of scholarly distinction and accomplishment (for limitations of the measure, see the discussion in the Sisk article).  Still, it is a useful check on uninformed opinions, and tracks rather well the actual scholarly output of different schools.  Do remember that citation counts vary by field, which is why the ten most-cited faculty at each school is dominated by faculty in fields like constitutional and public law, corporate law, criminal law & procedure, law & economics, and intellectual property.

Over the next six months or so, I will post new lists of the most-cited scholars by specialty utilizing the Sisk data.  I may post shorter lists this time around (e.g., top 5 rather than top 10), depending on my schedule.

Results for the top 50 below the fold:

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The "peer" (academic) reputation score in USNews.com's new ranking

The Blog Emperor compiles the data.  One could quibble with some of these results (e.g., Stanford isn't #1, except maybe in California!), but for the top 20 or so it's a lot less misleading than the "overall" ranking.

Law Schools Unfairly Ranked by U.S. News

MOVING TO FRONT (ORIGINALLY POSTED OCT. 3 2011, SLIGHTLY REVISED IN THE INTERIM), SINCE IT IS TIMELY AGAIN

I've occasionally commented in the past about particular schools that clearly had artificially low overall ranks in U.S. News, and readers e-mail me periodically asking about various schools in this regard.   Since the overall rank in U.S. News is a meaningless nonsense number, permit me to make one very general comment:   it seems to me that all the law schools dumped into what U.S. News calls the unranked lower tiers--indeed, all the law schools ranked ordinally beyond the top 25 or 30  based on irrelevant and trivial differences-- are unfairly ranked and represented.  This isn't because all these schools have as good faculties or as successful graduates as schools ranked higher--though many of them, in fact, do--but because the metric which puts them into these lower ranks is a self-reinforcing one, and one that assumes, falsely and perniciously, that the mission of all law schools is the same.  Some missions, to be sure, are the same at some generic level:  e.g., pretty much all law schools look to train lawyers and produce legal scholarship.  U.S. News has no meaningful measure of the latter, so that part of the shared mission isn't even part of the exercise.  The only "measures" of the former are the employment statistics that schools self-report to the ABA and bar exam results.  The latter may be only slightly more probative, except that the way U.S. News incorporates them into the ranking penalizes schools in states with relatively easy bar exams.  So with respect to the way in which the missions of law schools are the same, U.S. News employs no pertinent measures. 

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Non-JD enrollment at "top 20ish" law schools

My former Texas colleague John Dzienkowski calls my attention to this astonishing chart showing non-JD enrollment (mostly LLM and SJD enrollment) at some leading law schools.   LLM students are usually paying tuition, and are invisible to USNews.com rankings.   Penn, which is half the size of Harvard, has as many non-JD students, which is extraordinary.  So too is the non-JD enrollment at Northwestern, and USC.   The zero figure for Michigan must be an error.