Brian Leiter’s new “scholarly impact” rankings, measuring impact from 2005-2009, are here.
Update (from TZ): Professor Leiter tells me via email that his report actually wasn’t intended to go live quite yet and that he is still editing it, so that there are expected revisions to come.
S says:
Cal. Irvine shows the benefits of starting a new school with old faculty members. Also, I am not surprised that Lindgren does not contribute at NWLU. Finally, the steep fall in the normalized score in the top ten is interesting.
April 2, 2010, 2:53 pmEugene Volokh says:
S: I just did a Westlaw query, and it showed that Jim Lindgren name comes up in 2005-2009 articles 294 times; the overwhelming majority of these are article citations (a few are thanks for having helped the author of an article). This might barely miss the top ten at Northwestern, which has some excellent scholars, but it’s a top-notch five-year total that the overwhelming majority of legal scholars would envy — it certainly doesn’t count as “does not contribute.” (The same would be true if one looked at all the mentions, not limited to five years; the total there is 800.)
April 2, 2010, 3:06 pmS says:
I’m sorry. I was referring to the scholarly impact rankings, where Lindgren does not show up to contribute, either overall or by academic specialization and which is the subject of the above post.
April 2, 2010, 4:06 pmCalderon says:
I have both surprised and impressed that Conspirator emeritus E. Posner is ranked so highly. I also didn’t know Prof. Bainbridge was prominent in corporate law field.
April 2, 2010, 4:45 pmCalderon says:
Also somewhat notable that John Yoo basically would be tied for #1 on international law with Goldsmith if he were counted as publishing primilarily in that area.
April 2, 2010, 4:51 pmerp says:
Congratulations to all the brilliant conspirators for their good work.
April 2, 2010, 6:52 pmSteve P. says:
Congratulations to Profs Kerr and Volokh, both for impressive rankings, and for being the youngest person on their respective lists.
April 2, 2010, 7:03 pmMark Field says:
I suspect that Yoo gets cited for the purpose of rebutting his arguments. I’m not sure that makes him as much of a contributor as might be inferred just from the number of citations.
April 2, 2010, 7:09 pmJonathan H. Adler says:
Congrats to my co-conspirators for their impressive showings. Alas, no environmental ranking this year.
JHA
April 2, 2010, 7:20 pmfrankcross says:
Anybody surprised by how low USC is? And to a lesser degree Georgetown?
April 2, 2010, 9:07 pmCalderon says:
Sure, but a large number of cites are for the purposes of rebutting arguments, so that wouldn’t be unusual. Indeed, providing arguments that other law professors are worth rebutting is a key way of contributing to legal scholarship.
April 2, 2010, 9:22 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Did you mean refuting?
April 2, 2010, 10:18 pmjust me says:
So many professors at highly ranked schools. Is it that highly ranked schools attract high impact professors or rather being at a high ranked school leads one to be widely cited?
April 2, 2010, 10:29 pmMark Field says:
I was being polite.
April 2, 2010, 10:36 pmMark Field says:
Within limits, I agree. I don’t think those limits are applicable to Yoo.
April 2, 2010, 10:38 pmCalderon says:
Well, obviously Yoo comes in for a lot of criticism for the torture memos, which I agree seem to be poorly reasoned and researched and incorrect as objective advice (though it’s not my area and certainly I haven’t spent the time many other on this cite have on thie issue). But Yoo also has written a large number of law review articles, and most likely those are what have been cited. I haven’t heard the same kinds of criticisms directed as those as the torture memos, and I’m skeptical that they’re outside the limits of legal discourse given that he’s been published in a lot of leading journals.
In any case, I would have thought that because of the torture memos Yoo would be treated as persona non grata by the vast majority of law professors. That is, they wouldn’t cite him or acknowledge his existence. I was surprised that wasn’t the case. (I was also surprised he wasn’t treated as an international law scholar, since almost all of his work is in that area, but anyway …)
April 2, 2010, 11:50 pmKazinski says:
Whether Yoo is being cited to refute him or to buttress their own arguments, he is being cited because his views matter. If they didn’t care what he thinks they wouldn’t cite him, which means he is influential.
April 3, 2010, 12:05 amKazinski says:
I try not to complain in my comments even when I disagree, but I am very concerned about the number of VC bloggers on Leiter’s list. While I realize they are very productive and self disciplined, I can’t help but thinking that all these scholarly articles they are writing must be cutting into their blogging time.
I know there are probably many others that will check over here at one am, as I often do, and when they note that there hasn’t been a new post in at least 3 hours, wonder just what law review is benefiting at our expense.
April 3, 2010, 12:15 amCornellian says:
Nice to see Cornell doing reasonably well, but should Vanderbilt really be that high?
April 3, 2010, 2:20 amlessinsf says:
University of San Diego sneaking in there at No. 34. U.S. News needs to catch up. go Torero law!
April 3, 2010, 7:14 pm