Law Professors, Law Schools

Ranking The Most Important Law Professors

Which professors are really moving the law?

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rank ranking rate rating employee team teamworkHow does one even begin to rank law professors? One could total up scholarly citations, but that only measures the excitement level of uptight 3Ls. You could figure out who’s the hottest, but that doesn’t seem particularly useful either. So a new study by University of St. Thomas law school researchers decided to measure law professors based on their judicial impact using citations in U.S. Supreme Court, federal circuit court, and state high court opinions.

So here are the top law professors in the country when judges get to decide:

via SSRN

via SSRN

So… I guess don’t be a woman? Or a minority for that matter. I mean, Akhil Amar’s Indian heritage adds diversity, but the closest this list gets to a black guy is if confuse Michael Dorf with the guy who played Worf. By my cursory review of the tables in this study, Reva Siegel of Yale makes the top 10 when isolated to SCOTUS opinions and Tracey Maclin is favored by state high courts, but those exceptions only highlight the rule. Looks like improving faculty diversity and putting more people in the position to get their scholarship read by the courts is still a daunting task.

Beyond that, the study reveals that noted Star Wars aficionado Cass Sunstein is the most cited academic at the U.S. Supreme Court, while Eugene Volokh reigns supreme over the circuit courts. Most importantly, NYU Law has the most professors in the top 100 cited, so put that in your pipe Yale.

The whole study is available here if you want to get into the weeds of the study’s different measures.

Ranking Law Professors by Judicial Impact [WSJ Law Blog]

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Joe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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