Just Released: Leiter's Most Cited Law Professors by Specialty, 2000-2007

Editor's Note: The below does not reflected revisions made to Brian Leiter's Most Cited Law Professors by Specialty, 2000-2007 study. [JH]

Brian Leiter has published his study entitled Most Cited Law Professors by Specialty, 2000-2007 at Brian Leiter's Law School Rankings. Here's the announcement on his blog. The study identifies the 10 most cited faculty (in many instances the 20 most cited faculty) in 18 legal specialties. The image (left, click to enlarge) displays the citation density for the top 10 most cited faculty in each specialty. Note how compact Will, Trusts and Estates, Tax, Criminal Law and Procedure, and several other specialties are.

Leiter's study also ranks the top 15 law schools by percentage of faculty in the Top 10 or Top 20 of their specialties. Not surprisingly, Yale ranks first.

If one wishes to estimate a law school's scholarly reputation in a specialty by the number of faculty members listed in Leiter's citation analysis of that specialty then Yale stands out with 4 faculty members in the top 10 for Constitutional and Public Law and 3 in the top 8 for Legal History; Columbia with 3 in the top 4 for Business Law; Harvard with 2 in the top 3 and Georgetown with 3 in the top 10 for Critical Theories; UC-Berkeley with 2 in the top 3 for IP/Cyberlaw; and the University of Chicago with 3 in the top 4 for Law & Economics.

Top Guns. Some top ranked law professors stand out by how many more citations their work has garnered over the next most cited scholar in their specialty. For example:

• Constitutional and Public Law: Cass Sustein's 6,180 citations (first in the field) compared to Laurence Tribe's 3,520 (second);
• Law & Economics: Richard Epstein, first with 3,390 citations, Eric Posner, second with 2,020 (but Epstein has had a 22 year head start);
• Law & Philosophy: Ronald Dworkin, 3,070 followed by Martha Nussbaum, 1,130; and
• Legal Ethics/Legal Profession: Deborah Rhodes with 3,180, Geoffrey Hazard, Jr., 1,140.

A Quick Look at Demographics for the Top 10 Most Cited Law Professors by Specialty

Click on the image for a larger display

Young Guns. As observed by Leiter, the lists are dominated by faculty in their 50s and 60s but I was surprised to find that the "young guns" are fairly well represented with 16% of the listed Top 10 most cited faculty being under the age of 50, including the following scholars listed in the Top 5 of their specialty:

• Criminal Law and Procedure: Dan Kahan (Yale) age 44 (ranked 1st), William Stuntz (Harvard) 49 (4th)
• Environmental Law: Richard Revesz (New York) 49 (3rd)
• International Law: Jack Goldsmith (Harvard) 45 (1st), Curtis Bradley (Duke) 43 (4th) and Sean Murphy (George Washington) 47 (5th)
• IP/Cyber Law: Mark Lemley (Stanford) 41 (1st), Robert Merges (UC-Berkeley) 48 ((2nd), Dan Burk (Minnesota) 45 (tied for 5th)
• Law & Economics: Eric Posner (Chicago) 42 (2nd), Ian Ayres (Yale) 48 (3rd)
• Law & Social Science: Lee Epstein (Northwestern) 49 (2nd), Jeffrey Rachlinski (Cornell) 41 (5th)
• Tax: Edward McCaffery (USC) 49 (3rd)

Two thirty-somethings made the most cited lists: Robert Sitkoff (Harvard) who at the age of 33 is the seventh most cited scholar in Wills, Trusts & Estates, and Orin Kerr (George Washington) age 36, the 20th most cited scholar in Criminal Law & Procedure. Not bad for a citation study that goes back to 2000.

Gender. Sixteen percent of the Top 10 most cited faculty are women, including the following scholars listed in the Top 5 of their speciality:

• Civil Procedure: Judith Resnik (Yale) (ranked 2nd), Deborah Hensler (Stanford) (4th)
• Critical Theories: Martha Minow (Harvard) (1st), Catharine MacKinnon (Michigan) (5th)
• Environmental Law: Carol Rose (Arizona) (2nd)
• Evidence: Margaret Berger (Brooklyn) (2nd)
• IP/Cyber Law: Pamela Samuelson (Berkeley) (3rd), Jessica Litman (Michigan) (4th), Jane Ginsburg (Columbia) (tied for 5th)
• Labor & Employment: Katherine van Wezel Stone (UCLA) (4th), Cynthia Estlund (New York) (5th)
• Law & Philosophy: Martha Nussbaum (Chicago) (2nd)
• Law & Social Science: Deborah Merrit (OSU) (3rd)
• Legal Ethics/Legal Profession: Deborah Rhode (Stanford) (1st)
• Legal History: Reva Siegel (Yale) (3rd)

Much more detail at Brian Leiter's Most Cited Law Professors by Specialty, 2000-2007. [JH]