UChicago Law School Ranked #3

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>UChicago Law School ranks #3 based on which school's faculty is most cited in law journals, according to a new study.</p>

<p>Law</a> Professor Superlatives: Most-Cited Law Faculties - Law Blog - WSJ</p>

<p>The Top 10 Law Schools Based on Most Law Journal Citations:</p>

<p>1) Yale
2) Harvard
3) UChicago
4) Stanford
5) NYU
6) Columbia
7) Cal-Irvine
8) Vanderbilt
9) Cornell
10) Cal-Berkeley</p>

<p><a href="http://www.stthomas.edu/law/academics/library/scholarlyimpactstudy/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stthomas.edu/law/academics/library/scholarlyimpactstudy/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>In addition, a University of Chicago law professor, R. H. Coase, is the author of the #1 most-cited article of all time, according to another study (which was mostly focused on which law journals were cited the most).</p>

<p>The</a> Most-Cited Law Review Articles of All Time - Law Blog - WSJ</p>

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<p>Ummm, that’s nice, but</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Look at the list. A methodology that puts Cal-Irvine into the top ten of law schools is a methodology that doesn’t work. Chicago has a great, universally respected law school; it doesn’t need gimmicky rating schemes for recognition. (And that’s especially true if the citation count included Ron Coase.)</p></li>
<li><p>Ronald Coase is 101 years old. He is a Nobel Prize winner in Economics. His seminal articles – which are really a big deal, sort of the law equivalent of Origin of Species – were written while he was a professor at LSE in the 1930s, and then at UVa in the early 60s. He did spend the end of his active career teaching at Chicago, but that was a long time ago.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>Very true–just more proof that UChicago is one of the very best law schools, as we all know.</p>

<p>But this ranking is hardly a ‘gimmick.’ There are three main (long-established) ways to rank faculty quality in most fields, not just law:</p>

<p>1) reputation surveys among peers
2) faculty most published in top journals
3) faculty most cited in top journals</p>

<p>None of these ways of ranking schools is perfect. Each has flaws. One of the main drawbacks of reputation surveys is the ‘halo effect.’ There is a tendency, as your comments show, to say school X or Y is or isn’t a top school just because it is school X or Y–regardless of what other objective evidence reveals. (You could also dismiss all reputation rankings for similar reasons. U.S. News’ business school reputation ranking rated Stanford #14 in executive MBA programs, even though it doesn’t have an executive MBA program. Therefore, you could say all reputation surveys are BS and couldn’t possibly be true.)</p>

<p>[Wharton</a> Tops U.S. News’ Poll Of Best EMBAs | Poets & Quants for Executives](<a href=“http://poetsandquantsforexecs.com/2012/03/14/wharton-tops-u-s-news-best-embas/]Wharton”>Poets&Quants for Execs - Wharton Tops U.S. News' Poll Of Best EMBAs)</p>

<p>It is often the case that schools with certain reputations can’t sustain the claim based on other, objective criteria. UChicago doesn’t have this problem so I’m not worried about it.</p>

<p>Of course, there is nothing stopping people from using their brains and considering more than one piece of information or ranking. But if the evidence doesn’t support your favorite school’s press release or what your grandmother told you the best law schools are, then you have something to ponder.</p>

<p>2) Attempting to dismiss Coase because he is 101 years old or because he won the Nobel Prize in Economics would be laughable.</p>

<p>Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago. We don’t dismiss him for this reason. Indeed, if Coase’s article is still the most cited in 200 years it would be very much to his credit.</p>

<p>As you know, UChicago is known for Law and Economics and, of course, has far more Nobel prize winners in economics than any other school.</p>

<p>Furthermore, if UChicago was able to recruit him from UVA when he was in his prime, that is more to UChicago’s credit.</p>

<p>But I’m not trying to shut UVa or LSE out in the cold. People do have more than one affiliation often. All three schools can count him if they want; his high school could, too, and probably does. In any event, I imagine Coase would have something nice to say about the nearly 50 years he has spent at the University of Chicago (far more time than he spent anywhere else) if one were to ask him.</p>

<p>[Ronald</a> H. Coase | University of Chicago Law School](<a href=“http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/coase/]Ronald”>UChicago - Sign In)</p>

<p>Institution’s have a past and a present to consider and UChicago Law School does very well in both regards.</p>

<p>And, for any one reading this, if you spend any amount of time at UChicago, I will be putting a little checkmark in the UChicago column for any of your accomplishments, even if you did your best work in kindergarten.</p>

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<p>Q: Who cares?</p>

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<p>I find it v. interesting that NYU has gone up that high. My roomie applied to both coming out of Chicago undergrad, got into NYU, waitlisted at Columbia Law. Was bummed at first but then really got into the NYU program. </p>

<p>He’s got homes in Buenos Aries, Manhattan and Chicago now so I guess it’s all good.</p>

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<p>Interesting! Whether it’s a good measure or not it was interesting to see.</p>

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<p>Law professors move around a fair bit, and it’s interesting to see that a number of them are being double-counted in these rankings. Richard Epstein is in there both for Chicago and NYU, and Ron Gilson for both Stanford and Columbia. They are both well-known and prolific scholars, so I imagine it matters who gets to claim their output.</p>

<p>(It’s not at all surprising that NYU does well in this. The NYU Law School is enormously wealthy, and controls lovely apartments in one of the most exciting neighborhoods of New York City. New York City also has many top-flight law firms who sometimes hire academic consultants. NYU does a GREAT job of hiring prominent faculty from elsewhere. Epstein is a great example – he spent his entire career at Chicago, and in the legal world no one other than Richard Posner is more closely associated with the Chicago Law School. But as of a couple of years ago, he is also teaching at NYU.)</p>