In the New Yorker, well-known writer Malcolm Gladwell has an article presenting his own law school ranking system. Gladwell is highly critical of the US News rankings, and believes his approach is superior (fuller, subscription-only version here): There’s no direct way to measure the quality of an institution — how well a college manages to […]
Archive | Law Schools
Will the End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Lead to the Return of ROTC Programs to Elite Universities?
By Ilya Somin on February 1, 2011 2:35 am in Academia, Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT), Law Schools, Military
At the Weekly Standard blog, Cheryl Miller asks whether the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will lead to the return of ROTC programs to elite university campuses [HT: here]. In recent years, university officials have defended the exclusion of ROTC from campus as a way of countering the military’ discrimination against gays and lesbians, […]
Richard Posner on the Bluebook
Almost five years ago, I wrote a post arguing for the abolition of the Bluebook, the standard system of legal citation used by most law journals. As I argued there and in several subsequent posts (e.g. here), I think the Bluebook is vastly more complicated than it should be, and creates an enormous waste of […]
Speaking of Wealthy Organizations that Benefit from Unnecessary Rules…
According to the National Law Journal, the ABA is considering dropping its requirement that law school applicants take the LSAT. Loyola Chicago Dean David Yellin, a member of the relevant ABA committee, notes that committee members have also questioned whether the ABA should be making rules that financially benefit the Law School Admission Council—the organization […]
ROI for Law School
Probably many readers have seen this New York Times article, offering a lengthy and well-reported analysis in the Business Pages by David Segal of whether law school is a worthwhile investment. The analysis points to a couple of different factors, including: supply of lawyers outstripping demand, now and into the future; cost of legal education […]
Alito in Hawaii
In today’s mail, I received a promotional postcard (part of the genre known as “law porn”) announcing that the University of Hawaii School of Law “Welcomes 2011 Jurist-in-Residence U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., January 24-28, 2011.” I suppose that I’m meant to be impressed that Justice Alito is visiting the law […]
Practicing Lawyers vs. Legal Academics
Bridget Crawford wonders why practicing lawyers don’t much like legal academics. Professor Bainbridge offers an explanation. Rick Garnett responds with some qualifications. UPDATE: More at Legal Ethics Forum.
A Celebration of 35 Years of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars
I am privileged this week to be in attendance at a marvelous conference at NYU celebrating the 35th anniversary of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, with Professor Walzer himself in attendance, and a host of luminaries among moral philosophy, law, and other fields. I don’t really have internet access at the conference, and the […]
Lawyers and Institutional Roles, or, Why Lawyers Seem So Obsessed With Technicalities
I was thinking recently, after teaching a first-year law class, that one of the key aspects of “thinking like a lawyer” is understanding institutional roles. The law often breaks down power among different institutions, with each institution getting one part of a broader problem. That means that each institution only has limited power, and the […]
Does George Mason Have the Most Conservative Law Students?
The new Princeton Review rankings state that George Mason has the “most conservative students” “based on student assessment of the political bent of the student body at large”. My impression over the years has been that the student body at GMU is more or less evenly split between liberals and conservatives, which I’m pretty sure […]
Congratulations to Brown Law!
The Princeton Review has just released its 2011 law school guide book, “The Best 172 Law Schools,” which includes rankings based upon extensive student surveys. According to their press release (cached here), Brown University’s law school ranked number one in the “best professors” survey category. Congratulations to all our friends on Brown’s law faculty. (Hat […]
Query re University Administrative Bloat
CoConspirator Todd’s post on the growth of administrative staff at universities raises a further question for me. Considered as a public choice/incentives question, what are the rational incentives of university administrators regarding faculty tenure? We have had some interesting discussions here at VC on the policy considerations on tenure – I’ll weigh in on them […]
Gender Diversity and Law Review
Here’s an interesting finding: Among the Top 50 law schools, the gender balance on law review and in leadership positions on law review almost exactly matches the gender balance of the law school student bodies as a whole (about 55% men, 45% women).
Forbes Plans New Law School Rankings
According to Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog, Forbes magazine is planning to issue a new set of law school rankings to compete with the ubiquitous US News rankings. It is a good thing that a prominent publication is going to create a competing ranking system. The US News rankings have many well-known flaws, such as […]
Larry Ribstein Comments on Lawyerly Competitive Advantage
There are a couple of academic business law blogs I read regularly – particularly The Conglomerate and Truth on the Market. So I was flattered to see that Larry Ribstein, at Truth on the Market, put up a short comment on a short essay of mine that appeared last semester in my school’s short-form essay […]