Brian Leiter's Law School Reports

Once again into the fray.  A brief excerpt from the paper:

The main threats to academic freedom in the natural sciences in the capitalist democracies come from powerful business interests that disfavor, for profit-seeking reasons, certain discoveries:   for example, concerning the human contribution to climate change, to take the most important example in the present, but also findings about the inefficacy of particular pharmaceuticals and medical treatments.   Businesses have a strong interest in the correct natural scientific understanding of the causal order of nature, to be sure, since the extraction of profit from nature requires it.  At the same time, businesses also have strong interests in concealing certain scientific results that might impede popular acceptance of their business practices and consumption of their products.  Academic freedom is a crucial bulwark in favor of discovering truths about the natural world even in the relatively free capitalist societies.

 

In the human sciences, the issues are usually different:  it is, shall we say, rare for international corporations to get exercised about the latest developments in the history of early modern Europe or philosophy of the social sciences.  The threats to academic freedom in the human sciences come less from the business sector, and more often from political and religious interest groups whose normative commitments are threatened by the findings of the human sciences.   In the United States, for example, external pressure is frequently brought upon universities who try to employ critics of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.[1]   But the pressure to violate academic freedom comes from within the universities too.   Indeed, some humanists have concocted a whole new metaphysics of “silencing” and “marginalizing” and “violence” to describe the expression of ideas that are offensive and insulting to certain minority groups.  For these academic insiders, Marcusian “indiscriminate” toleration in academic discourse is not acceptable, since the expression of ideas that might be hurtful to individuals based on group membership—in particular, membership in groups that have been victims of historical practices of subordination (e.g., African-Americans in the United States, though more recently, transgender individuals)—is alleged to “silence” members of that group and do “violence” to them.   

Continue reading

December 5, 2017 in Jurisprudence | Permalink

These are non-clinical appointments that will take effect in 2018 (except where noted); I will move the list to the front at various intervals as new additions come in.   (Recent additions are in bold.)  Last year's list is here.  Feel free to e-mail me with news of additions to this list.

 *Richard Albert (constitutional law, comparative constitutional law) from Boston College to the University of Texas, Austin (effective January 2018).

 

*Joshua Blank (tax) from a professor of practice position at New York University to the University of California, Irvine.

 

 *Binyamin Blum (legal history, evidence, criminal procedure) from Hebrew University, Jerusalem to the University of California Hastings (effective spring 2018) (untenured lateral). 

 

*William Boyd (environmental law, energy law) from the University of Colorado, Boulder to the University of California, Los Angeles.

 

*Samuel Bray (remedies, property, constitutional law) from the University of California, Los Angeles to the University of Notre Dame.

 

*Robert Jackson, Jr. (corporate law) from Columbia University to New York University (though he will be on leave initially while serving on the SEC).

 

 *Orin Kerr (criminal procedure, computer crime law) from George Washington University to the University of Southern California (effective January 2018).  

 

*Jill Wieber Lens (torts, products liability, remedies) from Baylor University to the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville (effective January 2018).

 

*Curtis Milhaupt (Japanese law, East Asian legal system comparative corporate governance) from  Columbia University to Stanford University (effective January 2018).

 

 *Frank Partnoy (corporate, securities) from the University of San Diego to the University of California, Berkeley.

 

*James Ryan (education law) from Harvard University Education School back to University of Virginia (to become President of the University).

 

*Rose Cuison Villazor (immigration law, equal protection, critical race theory) from the University of California, Davis to Rutgers University. 

December 4, 2017 in Faculty News | Permalink

...but they weren't.  Several law schools, including Stanford, make the same claim, and I suspect an analysis of the real data would show something similar.  Ever since we were fortunate to be able to award Rubinstein Scholarships to incoming students, I've been amused to discover how often Yale and Harvard find those students to be especially "needy." 

December 4, 2017 in Of Academic Interest, Rankings | Permalink

Articles by Matt Tokson (Utah), Will Baude (Chicago), and James Stern (William & Mary) were influencing the Justices yesterday when Carpenter was argued at SCOTUS; my colleague Lior Strahilevitz has the details. 

November 30, 2017 in Faculty News, Of Academic Interest | Permalink

House Republicans recently voted along party lines in favor of a tax bill that specifically targeted higher education institutions and students for tax hikes, while providing large tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals.  The Wall Street Journal reports that House Republicans are proposing an additional higher education bill that would make the terms of federal student loans less flexible and less generous and limit federal student loan availability.  Specifically, the bill would eliminate Public Service Loan Forgiveness and reduce the availability of flexible repayment plans for all borrowers. It would also cap maximum borrowing from the federal government at a lower level.

These measures, if enacted, would be a boon to private student lenders like Sallie Mae, who would be able to both increase their prices and increase their market share as federal student loans become less competitive and less available.  Consequently, expected financing costs for students will likely increase, to the detriment of both students and educational institutions.

According to a study by the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Education, loans to graduate and professional students are the most profitable in the government's portfolio--even after income based repayment and debt forgiveness.  Capping loans to these attractive borrowers may reduce the overall profitability of federal student lending, and pave the way for arguments for more cuts to federal lending in the future. 

The bill reportedly will also reduce regulation of for-profit college sales and marketing, and provide greater funding for 2-year degrees and apprenticeship programs.  Labor economists who have studied 2-year degrees and apprenticeship programs typically find that these programs provide relatively low benefits (in terms of increased earnings and employment) compared to 4-year college degrees and graduate degrees, even after accounting for differences in the costs of these programs and differences in student populations.  Thus, increasing funding for apprenticeships while reducing funding for 4-year degrees and advanced degrees is likely to impede economic growth.

These educational priorities, may however, provide Republicans with political advantages.  Political scientists and pollsters have found that as education levels increase--after controlling for income, race, sex, and age--individuals become more likely to identify as Democrats and less likely to identify as Republicans.  The association is particularly pronounced among scientists and others with graduate degrees.  

November 29, 2017 in Guest Blogger: Michael Simkovic, Legal Profession, Of Academic Interest, Science, Web/Tech, Weblogs | Permalink

Blog Emperor Caron collects the results.  Syracuse continues its outstanding performance, noted last year.  And St. John's sees a big improvement.

November 28, 2017 in Legal Profession, Of Academic Interest | Permalink

Here's a video of the session from a couple of weeks ago as part of the HLS bicentennial.  Opening remarks about Langdell are by John Goldberg (Harvard), who is followed by Catherine Wells (Boston College), me, Anthony Sebok (Cardozo), and Henry Smith (Harvard).  For those interested, my remarks on "Langdell, Wissenschaft, Realism" begin at 19:20.  I found Smith's remarks about the role of a firmer law/equity distinction in Langdell's views especially interesting.

November 22, 2017 in Jurisprudence | Permalink

MOVING TO FRONT (ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 24, 2009--I HAVE UPDATED CERTAIN NUMBERS)--SEE ALSO THE COMMENTS, WHICH HAVE HELPFUL ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS

With luck, some of you seeking law teaching jobs will get offers of tenure-track positions in the next couple of months; a handful of offers have already been extended this season (2017-18).  What then?  Here's roughly what I tell the Chicago job candidates we work with that they need to find out, and in the interest of having it written down in one place and for the benefit of others too, here it is (not in order of importance):

1.  You will want to get (in writing eventually) the basic salary information, obviously, and the nature of summer research support and the criteria for its award (is it automatic for junior faculty?  contingent on prior publication [if so, how much?]?  awarded competitively (if so, based on what criteria/process)?).   You should also find out how salary raises are determined.  Are they, for example, lock-step for junior faculty?  Fixed by union contract?  (Rutgers faculty, for example, are unionized, a huge advantage and why they are among the best-paid faculty, not just in law, in the country.)  Is it a 'merit' system, and if so is it decanal discretion or is their a faculty committee that reviews your teaching and work each year?

2.  You should ask for a copy of the school's tenure standards and get clear about the expectations and the timeline.  Does any work you have already published count towards meeting the tenure standard?

3.  What research leave policy, if any, does the school have?  A term off after every three full years of teaching is a very good leave policy; some schools have even better policies, most have less generous leave policies.  (If there is a norm, it is a term off after every six years.)  Many schools have a special leave policy for junior faculty, designed to give them some time off prior to the tenure decision.  Find out if the school has such a policy.

4.  One of the most important things to be clear about is not just your teaching load, but what courses you will be teaching precisely.  You should ask whether the school can guarantee a stable set of courses until after the tenure decision.  Preparing new courses is hugely time-consuming, and you also get better at teaching the course the more times you do it.  As a tenure-track faculty member, having a stable package of, say, three courses (plus a seminar) will make a huge difference in terms of your ability to conduct research and write.   In my experience, most schools will commit in writing to a set of courses for the tenure-track years (and do ask for this in writing), but some schools either won't or can't.   In my view, it's a good reason to prefer one school to another that one will give you the courses you want and promise them that they're yours, while another won't--a consideration that overrides lots of other factors, including salary.

Continue reading

November 21, 2017 in Advice for Academic Job Seekers | Permalink | Comments (14)

Story here.  UIC has a medical school, but no law school, while John Marshall is a free-standing law school.  If the acquisition occurred, it would be the only public law school in Chicago, and, assuming there was some tuition discount for state residents, it would put particular pressure on private law schools in the city like DePaul and Chicago-Kent.

November 21, 2017 in Legal Profession, Of Academic Interest | Permalink

...can post about it here.

November 20, 2017 in Advice for Academic Job Seekers | Permalink

Following up on my previous post, Republican Tax Hikes Target Education, Erin Rousseau, a neuroscience graduate student at MIT, writes in the New York Times: 

"Republicans in the House of Representatives have just passed a tax bill that would devastate graduate research in the United States. . . . I’m a graduate student at M.I.T., where I study the neurological basis of mental health disorders. My peers and I work between 40 and 80 hours a week as classroom teachers and laboratory researchers, and in return, our universities provide us with a tuition waiver for school. . . .

[U]nder the House’s tax bill, our waivers will be taxed. This means that M.I.T. graduate students would be responsible for paying taxes on an $80,000 annual salary, when we actually earn $33,000 a year. That’s an increase of our tax burden by at least $10,000 annually.

It would make meeting living expenses nearly impossible, barring all but the wealthiest students from pursuing a Ph.D. The students who will be hit hardest — many of whom will almost certainly have to leave academia entirely — are those from communities that are already underrepresented in higher education. . . .

The law would also decimate American competitiveness. . . . 

Graduate students are part of the hidden work force that drives some of the most important scientific and sociological advancements in the country. The American public benefits from it. Every dollar of basic research funded by the National Institutes of Health, for example, leads to a $1.70 output from biotechnology industries. The N.I.H. reports that the average American life span has increased by 30 years, in part, because of a better understanding of human health. I’d say that’s a pretty good return on investment for United States taxpayers."

November 17, 2017 in Guest Blogger: Michael Simkovic, Law in Cyberspace, Of Academic Interest, Science, Weblogs | Permalink

That seems to be the import of this somewhat cryptic announcement.  Those with more information may post that in the comments; submit your comment only once, it may take awhile to appear.

November 16, 2017 in Legal Profession, Of Academic Interest | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blog Emperor Caron has a round-up.  I hope and expect more will.  This is a particularly good development for JD/PhD students, who in the past had to taken two different standardized tests.

November 16, 2017 in Legal Profession, Of Academic Interest | Permalink

I was in Boulder for a couple of days last week (hence the quiet here), and will be at Columbia tomorrow, so don't expect much new before Thursday.

November 14, 2017 in Navel-Gazing | Permalink

The poll covering the rest of the top 40 got more than 300 votes (compared to a bit more than 160 for "the top 20"), no doubt because more schools were involved.   The obvious drawback of a poll like this--namely, that people can vote for their own school and try to vote strategically--is counteracted by the Condorcet method (which defeats most strategic voting) and by sufficient participation; in the end, the folks who rank their own school #1 have little effect on their own school, what matters is their relative ordering of everyone else.

I've combined the results of the two polls to produce a "top 40" law faculties in terms of scholarly distinction.  Especially outside the top 20, presenting lists of faculty names seems to have muted the U.S. News effect present from earlier polls even more, as reflected in, e.g., the disappearance of Wisconsin and Arizona State from the top 40 (they are all top 40 in U.S. News), and the significant improvements for San Diego, Brooklyn, and Cardozo.  (I actually think ASU should be in the top 40 for faculty quality, but the poll had it a bit outside.)

In any case, this seems to be a far more plausible "top 40" in terms of scholarly quality of the faculty than we've gotten from prior surveys, let alone from U.S. News.  (Personally, I think Illinois and Hastings are underranked here, but that's another story.)

November 13, 2017 in Rankings | Permalink

..to the top 100.

November 11, 2017 in Of Academic Interest, Rankings | Permalink

This is the follow-up to the poll last week, seeking to evaluate 30 additional law faculties that might have some claim to being in the "top 40" for scholarly distinction.  Recall that UC Irvine and Minnesota rounded out the top 21, so this poll will rank 22 through 40.  Have fun!   Remember that the listing of faculty is merely representative (basically, the roughly 15 most-cited faculty at each school), but you may of course take into account other faculty at the school in assessing its scholarly strength.  Also, note that the poll will ask you to rank 1-30, but only "the top 19" will "win," i.e., fill out the top 40 when conjoined with the earlier poll.

UPDATE:  There's a typo in the Hastings faculty list:  the last person should be Joan C. Williams (not "John").  And for Notre Dame, it's "Richard Garnett" (not "Barnett").   In addition, Thomas Mitchell is wrongly listed with Wisconsin; he is now the Interim Dean at Texas A&M (Ann Althouse is also retired at Wisconsin).

PLEASE NOTE:  Any school that uses social media to rally voters will be disqualified from the results!  It is fine, however, to e-mail colleagues to invite them to participate in the survey; this will help wash out some of the attempts at strategic voting that affects the early results.  But no twitter or Facebook or blog postings about this!  (Please e-mail me if you spot violations of our strict survey protocol!)

ANOTHER ERROR OF OMISSION:  Stewart Sterk was supposed to have been on the Cardozo Law School faculty list.  Someone just pointed out that he was left off in error.

November 8, 2017 in Rankings | Permalink

MOVING TO FRONT FROM LAST YEAR (SINCE TIMELY AGAIN--AND MORE COMMENTS WELCOME--ORIGINALLY POSTED NOVEMBER 2007)

A rookie job seeker writes:

A question about the law teaching market, which I suspect will be of interest to a number of candidates who read your Law School Reports blog:  When can we expect to hear from hiring committees we spoke with at AALS?  Do the better schools tend to wait longer to make their calls?  And do schools tend to notify candidates that they *won't* be inviting them for a job talk, or do you only hear from them if they're interested?

If you think this is a worthwhile topic, perhaps you could open a post for comments so that hiring committee members could say what their procedure is.

My impression is that schools will contact the candidates they are most interested in within the first two weeks after the AALS hiring convention, and, more often than not, within the first week.  Schools will often have some candidates "on hold" beyond this period of time:  e.g., because they are reading more work by the candidate, or collecting references, or waiting to see how they fare with their top choices.  So it is quite possible to get call-backs beyond the two-week window.  Schools tend to be much slower in notifying candidates they are no longer in contention (you might not hear for a month or more). 

Schools higher in the "food chain" in general do move at a somewhat more, shall we say, "leisurely" pace, and schools lower in the "food chain" are more likely to have tiers of candidates they remain interested in, on the theory that they are likely to lose their first-round choices.

Those, to repeat, are my impressions, based on a decent amount of anecdotal evidence.  But I invite others to post their impressions and/or information about their school's practices.  No anonymous postings.  Post only once, comments are moderated and may take awhile to appear.

November 7, 2017 in Advice for Academic Job Seekers, Professional Advice | Permalink | Comments (16)

That's on the heels of a nearly 20% increase in June test-takers.  It seems clear that not only has the decline in law school applications bottomed out (it has been stable the last two years), but now seems poised for a non-trivial increase.   Law schools would be wise not to expand too much, though, especially with the ABA policing more carefully bar passage rates.   But stable or increasing enrollments means that law schools can invest in faculty lines again, which we're already seeing this year.

November 6, 2017 in Legal Profession, Of Academic Interest | Permalink

The draft tax plan unveiled last week by House Republicans targets students and educational institutions for tax increases.  The Republican proposal would eliminate the lifetime learning credit (worth as much as $2,000 per year per student), tax graduate students on tuition waivers, eliminate the (already limited) tax deduction for student loan interest, and tax endowments at leading research universities. 

The plan would also eliminate the tax deduction for most state and local taxes.  If taxpayers react by demanding state and local tax cuts, this move will put pressure on budgets at K-12 public schools and at public universities.  It will also make it more challenging for local and state governments to fund police and fire protection and economically vital physical infrastructure.  A lower cap on the mortgage interest deduction for new buyers might cause property values to fall, further eroding local tax revenues.

Cuts to funding for education and local government will help defray the costs of major reductions in corporate income tax rates, tax cuts for passive income, and elimination of taxes on inherited estates larger than $5.5 million. 

In aggregate the Republican tax plan is expected to increase federal debt levels by more than $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.  Repaying this debt without future tax increases will likely require significant cuts to funding for Social Security, Medicare and the U.S. military.  These programs account for the overwhelming majority of federal spending.

Reductions in funding for education and infrastructure could hurt economic growth.  A few Republicans claim that the tax cuts will dramatically boost growth, but many acknowledge that this is unlikely.  In the 1980s, and again in the early 2000s, Republicans claimed that tax cuts would cause the economy to grow so fast that the ratio of debt to GDP would fall.  Those predictions proved to be incorrect.  Tax revenue lagged projections and the ratio of federal debt to GDP grew from from 30 percent in the 1981 to more than 100 percent today. 

November 6, 2017 in Guest Blogger: Michael Simkovic, Law in Cyberspace, Of Academic Interest, Weblogs | Permalink