Top-Ten Recent SSRN Downloads

for manuscripts announced in the last 60 days in the criminal law and procedure journals are here. I have previously pointed out the obvious--that download numbers are far from a perfect proxy for manuscript quality, or even for manuscript interest. In addition to all the obvious reasons, be aware that the numbers on SSRN's top-ten list are for manuscripts that have been posted for various lengths of time. Manuscripts are eligible to appear on the list once they appear in one of SSRN's criminal law and procedure journals. Some make the list the first week they appear; others, nearer the end of their 60-day eligibility period. Moreover, the time varies between when a manuscript first appears on SSRN and when it is first announced in one of the e-journals, so some manuscripts will be eligible to appear on the list for a longer period of time after their initial posting than will others. For example, the crim pro e-journal from last Sunday included manuscripts first posted from September 17-19; the crim law e-journal released the same day had manuscripts first posted from September 13-23. The August 4 crim law e-journal included articles posted as early as January 22 and as late as July 22. (My previous post on this, suggesting that the date that an article is revised can prolong its time on the top-10 list, was in error.)

KC

Rank	Downloads	Paper Title
1	200	The Torture Lawyers Jens David Ohlin, Cornell Law School, Date posted to database: September 10, 2009 [2nd last week]
2	164	Blaming the Brain Steven K. Erickson, University of Missouri at Columbia - School of Law, Date posted to database: September 12, 2009 [5th last week]
3	157	Empirical Work in International Law: A Bibliographical Essay Tom Ginsburg, Gregory Shaffer, University of Chicago Law School, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - School of Law, Date posted to database: August 5, 2009
4	152	Debacle: How the Supreme Court Has Mangled American Sentencing Law And How It Might Yet Be Mended Frank O. Bowman III, University of Missouri School of Law, Date posted to database: September 10, 2009
5	132	Stranger Than Dictum: Why Arizona v. Gant Compels the Conclusion that Suspicionless Buie Searches Incident to Lawful Arrests are Unconstitutional Colin Miller, John Marshall Law School, Date posted to database: August 18, 2009
6	131	Can Bad Science Be Good Evidence: Lie Detection, Neuroscience, and the Mistaken Conflation of Legal and Scientific Norms Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia School of Law, Date posted to database: August 13, 2009 [new to top-ten list]
7	120	Finding Bernie Madoff: Predicting Fraud by Investment Managers Stephen G. Dimmock, William Christopher Gerken, Michigan State University - Department of Finance, Auburn University - Department of Finance, Date posted to database: September 11, 2009 [8th last week]
8	117	Law, Legal Institutions, and the Criminalization of the Underclass David Ray Papke, Marquette University - Law School, Date posted to database: August 4, 2009 [7th last week]
9	112	Governing Corporate Compliance Miriam H. Baer, Brooklyn Law School, Date posted to database: September 16, 2009 [10th last week]
10	108	The Centenary of a Mistake: One Hundred Years of Corporate Criminal Liability John Hasnas, Georgetown University, Date posted to database: August 20, 2009 [9th last week]