Academic

The Kindest Rankings of the ?Top 25" Law Reviews

By propertyprof

Talk of rankings--particularly of rankings of law journals--is a favorite of the legal academic blogosphere.  And it's fall, so it's time for hiring committee and promotion and tenure committee meetings.  So in the spirit of feeling good about our placements and those the people whose resumes we're reading, I thought that I'd post a table of the most generous rankings of law reviews.  This looks to what one might argue are the ?top 25" law reviews?the reviews at the top twenty-five law schools according to US News? peer assessment rank and the top twenty-five journals in terms of  the Washington and Lee Law Library?s ranking of citations and impact scores.  (Shout out to John Doyle for that terrific website.)  That is, if any school is in the top 25 (really 31, since there are ties between schools 24-31)  in US News' peer assessment rank or its lead law journal is in the top 25 in terms of citations by other journals or in terms of citation impact in journals, it's a top 25 journal.  Hey, 36 journals are in the top 25.  Don't you love new math?!

And just to be even rosier, I've assigned each journal a rank according to the journal?s best score on those three measures.  So we even have more than one number one journal!

Here's a ranking of law journals, ranking each journal according to its best score on the three factors  (US News peer assessment rank, citaitons rank, and impact rank).

1 Yale (US News, impact)
1. Harvard (US News, citations)
2.  NYU (impact)
3.  Stanford (US News)
3.  Columbia (US News, citations)
3.  Cornell (impact)
4.  Berkeley (citations, impact)
4.  Virginia (impact)
5.  Chicago (US News)
6.  Michigan (US News)
6.  Pennsylvania (citations)
6.  Georgetown (impact)
9.  UCLA (impact)
11. Duke (US News)
12.  Northwestern    (impact)
12.  UT-Austin    (citations)
14. Fordham    (citations)
14. Minnesota    (impact)
17.  Vanderbilt    (US News)
17. W&M        (impact)
18.  USC        (US News, impact)
19.  Wash U.    (US News)
20.  Iowa       (impact)
21. GW        (US News)
21. UNC        (US News, citations)
21. Boston College (impact)
22.  BU        (impact)
22. Notre Dame    (citations)
24. Cardozo    (citations)
24. Emory     (US News)
24. W&L        (US News)
24. Illinois    (US News)
24.  OSU        (US News)
24. Wiscon    (US News)
24.  Hastings   (US News)
24. UC-Davis    (US News)

Now, don't those rankings just make everyone feel good!

Here's all the data on one page.  And here are some of my more serious thoughts about law journal rankings and their relationship to the quality of the law school that produces them.

Of course, that then raises the possibility of a list of the "harshest" rankings--what's the worst ranking we can assign to a law journal out of US News peer assessment rank, citations, and impact?  Not a sport that's worth a lot of time; however, it's illuminating how a journal that does well on on ranking measure may do comparatively poorly on another.

Alfred Brophy

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on September 19, 2008 (boomark / email).