Given that the law is helpful, essential and non-separable with our lives, we surely would like to know the people that make laws and who practice in the legal profession. This query is the recent theme we have pursued in this and other related projects. The investigation has revealed a knowledge economy (savoir-faire) that has entwined law and the actions of law people, which growingly became edged to explain their behavior and moral and professional conduct. The expectation has been that graduate law classes are for foreign lawyers who would return to their home country to work as international lawyers or as professors. That has long been deemed as a given; but the precise reality has not been previously unraveled. With this backdrop, the current paper purports to survey the status and performance of graduate law degree holders in US law school, to rank global law schools, and explore the implications and findings concerning the processes and outcomes of their missions.
Would a lawyer be the worst of neighbors? There is a traditional Korean proverb that says just that. Nevertheless, the profession is thought by some to be one of the oldest on earth, perhaps comparable in antiquity with priests, monks or emperors1.
The practical use of laws also has had plenty of modern examples: We can ask for civil damages in case of an unfortunate traffic accident or seek recourse in case of an unexpected termination of pension benefits without due process of law. If aggrieved by unjust layoffs, we are entitled to fight for our rights with the assistance of a lawyer. Most importantly, many of us are beneficiaries of a democratically engendered legal process that helps to maintain our civilized lives with fundamental rights to protect life, limb and property being duly proclaimed and sustained by the polity or nation. The psychological benefits, alone, from a stable system of law, should be immeasurable if we take into consideration the resulting freedom from constant fear of non-predictable others. The kind of Hobbesian imagination of chaos if unchecked would be neither so radical nor remote if we see the turmoil of lawless communities in the movies or in a TV scene (Sherman & Cohn, 1989) . The zombie ghosts from a contagious death―as depicted in violent scenes in a recent Korean film, titled “Train to Pusan”―would not be irrelevant to an imagination of real life lawlessness of humans living in an uncontrolled community. Since the current form of modern democracy and free market capitalism has been founded, legal professionals have turned out to be one of the most important societal groups to sustain it. Lawyers have always been politically involved and their job is the most probable to help lead the nations. While many lawyers have been inculcated with the values of revolutionary ideals, the greatest of them have even been destined to proclaim the vision of supreme national documents. Given that the law is helpful, essential and non-separable with our lives, we surely would like to know the people that make laws and who practice in the legal profession and are responsible for the authority and prestige of law professionals (Glendon, Gordon, & Osakwe, 1994; Pistor, Wellons, & Sachs, 1999) . This query is the recent theme we have pursued in this and other related projects.
As background, this research planned to address the trending diversity of global education and law disciplines with increasing attention to ubiquitous socio-cultural terms that characterize the personalities and thoughts that trend in the traditional economic or political world. This study purports to elucidate a grey area of legal education that generally has been neglected out of the main concern of legal educators. Its focus on professionalization or graduate level education is also correlated with the fast changing intensity and diversity of market demand or knowledge economy. The taught-based doctorate, what we know as JDs in US law schools, would perhaps be more unique, and educational reform to crown the professionals with further graduate level degrees will seemingly continue to respond to new market demand. Executive MBAs or a different form of Doctor of Education than the traditional PhD in education may be one outcome to approximate JDs in law school. The sorting or ranking of graduate law degree holders, in this respect, can assist with a more refined understanding and could be a seminal work for spectators and interest holders of the legal education market, including graduate law students themselves, law teachers, investors and policy makers in this area (Korobkin, 1998) . The traditional ranking sources dealing with law schools are fortunately diverse or more specific given the relatively popular attraction of the legal market, more so than that of other departments. The National Jurist, Brian Leiter’s and many other student guides actually produced meet these kinds of needs. They lack, however, a serious inquiry into the arena of graduate law degree holders. To address this gap, we have collected data and evidence to assess the status and performance of LLMs and SJDs within the US law teaching market and analyzed them, ranking graduate law degree programs to appreciate the nature and quality of graduate law education. We also hope this research can fulfill a pioneering role to motivate further research. In Section 2, we will briefly state the problem leading to this research, the purpose of research, and how it was conducted. Though it is a comprehensive survey, the research has some limitations that are briefed in Section 3. In Section 4, we will present the analysis of data and implications of analyzed results. A short conclusion will follow in Section 5.
Who is it that leads and shapes the important institutions and groups of people that are involved in the legal profession? More specifically to suit the purpose of this research, who is in charge of developing their important frame of reference and the legal research that not only sustains the law schools, but also shapes legal education and the real world of law practice? One aspect of the answer to this question requires that we survey the educational background of law professors and legal practitioners and rate their performance (Laband, 1986; Masuoka, Grofman, & Feld, 2007; McCormick & Bernick, 1982; Schmidt & Chingos, 2007) 2. Interestingly within the US legal education system, we can find a dual class of degrees, JDs and graduate law ones, including those we denote as LLM, SJD or PhD in law. We have commonly in mind that legal education produces jurists, and law schools have long been held of import to the process of creating JDs, who would be deemed to be the majority in number and the foremost in providing professional legal services (Amsterdam, 1984; Wizner, 2001) . The presumption is that the holders of this degree would become law professors, federal or state judges, state attorneys, and conduct the practice of law in large or medium size firms or in small firms or in the solo form. The expectation has been that graduate law classes would be for foreign lawyers and that they would return to their home countries to serve as international lawyers or professors. That has long been deemed as an undeniable given, but the precise reality has yet to be unraveled. Since the ranking of certain things in this inquiry would be an important beginning point to appreciate their nature and quality, we resolved to survey the reality of the above assumption to yield a ranking which hopefully could develop through further research concerning the students who attend graduate law schools and the outcome of their studies (Brian Leiter’s 2016; Brophy, 2015; Fox, 2001; Sisk, Aggerbeck, Farris, McNevin, & Pitener; 2015) .
In this backdrop, the purpose of this research, firstly, is to assess the statistics and performance of LLMs, SJDs and PhD in laws within US law schools. Secondly, it will rank graduate law programs across those degrees to help the audience and interested players appreciate the nature and quality of the professionals with those training backgrounds. In order to address the purpose, we employed a quantitative method that investigated the whole of all of the US law school websites identified according to their ranking in US News and World Report (USWR)3. Often quantitative researchers use public surveys with samples and scaled questionnaires (Creswell, 2013) . However, such methodology would be less than relevant to the purpose since the theme does not pertain to the psychological or social perspectives. Therefore, the method of this study is similar to the national census for demographics, and this paper deals with the overall parameters relevant to our interest. Viewed globally, the research can be considered to deal with the most prominent cluster of relevant examples, namely, US law schools in some level of global prestige. The lead author of this paper had previously published the consulting-based SJD ranking (on fixed scale with 15/15/15/55), which was created from the Shapiro’s and truly global since it was compiled on the basis of Hein Online and ISI (Kim, Ju, & Khatun, 2015) . The investigation in this paper, on the other hand, is based on US law schools, but could be translated as global since the professionals are highly mobile to build their career paths. Also, the LLM program is a short year course, whose holders are more than widespread through the scope of the search and significantly internationalized. The SJD degree costs the students more years to complete ? hence possibly less internationalized-but it still is not irrelevant since many holders are from the international context. The point is that the LLMs, SJDs or PhDs in law across the globe can be taken equal and analogous to those that pursue the law teaching market in the US in furtherance of their legal career. Therefore, the result can be read within the national context of US legal education on one hand, and could be viewed globally on the other or taken as the kind of ideal, “perfect market” conceived by Adam Smith4.
The investigation had been performed roughly two months this summer along with the assistance of research aides. 10 or 20 law school websites were analyzed on a daily basis except for a recess period of one week to allow for attending the international schedule arranged during the last days of July, 2016. Since our focus had been on the research impact of law professors, and to avoid undue expense in time and energy, the faculty labelled “clinical”, “visiting”, “adjunct” and “other classes” less relevant to the role of devoted research was discarded. Since their product and citations are often minimal, new law professors, labelled “lecturer” and “assistant professor” were also excluded out of the investigatory scope. Therefore, the data that captured the purpose was such that covered those, who were designated with the title of “associate professor of law”, “professor of law” and “emeritus (APEs)”. We reasonably assumed that they would comprise the core of the people whose statistics would show the contemporary reality of professional research in the US law schools. As appears in the
This investigation relies upon the scholarly works available on the Internet depository at “scholar.google.com (SGC)” or publicly open records in accordance with the best available evidence principle. While the concept of research impact is equivalent to that of Shapiro and is based on citations or the recently coined term, citology, the standard of quality obviously came out different, and is admittedly rough and less than ideally defined. A strict dividing line to preserve the distinct identity of legal science held faithfully by Shapiro was necessarily sacrificed due to the counting of the whole of the available data (Shapiro, 2000, 2012) 5. Therefore, the citations of staff papers, unpublished SSRN materials and monographs or even informal writings as well as products or citations by non-legal sources were included (Black & Caron, 2006) . For similar reasons, Joseph Raz and John Finnis-British educated legal scholars-had far more counts than that of the Shapiro’s article published in 2000. Nevertheless, Shapiro’s care to comply with the “less than half rule” for identification of the “legal scholars” as opposed to those of “social science” has been maintained since merging the social and legal science data would likely produce an egregious result. Such confounded data would efface the identity of the legal education system as a whole (Shapiro, 2000, 2012) . For this reason, Max Weber, a doctorate in law from Germany-if assumed as an emeritus professor in US law schools-has been excluded although he should have been counted based on the Hein Online or law-related ISI data6. This same rationale has been applied to exclude B.S. Santos, who is a graduate law from Yale and currently has a post at UW-Madison law school. In this respect, the refinement of the classification by Shapiro, distinguishing such categories as law review articles, legal books, text writers, non-legal materials or method to determine the standard of law journals had a very good and vital cause. Generally, his method is crucial to preserve the identity of law, legal science, and the law school system, and we have partly and to the extent possible adhered to it through the work―and deviated from it, however, only to broadly sketch the area of contemporary exposure (Priest, 1983) 7.
It was also not possible to strictly filter the citations to reduce the numbers counted multiple times although they were made by one article, and the counts were made to reflect maximum totals8. The accuracy of counts, however, was attended to the best of human effort. Nevertheless, it was true that we faced some difficulties when the authors did not have an author page on Google Scholar9. Therefore, a margin of error in counts might be present, but it is believed that the efficacy of the final ranking will not be affected.
Since there are a number of law-related graduate law degrees, identifying them is not so simple, and they could have variant titles and distinct characteristics according to their program purpose. The MLS degree of Yale or Illinois and MLI of Wisconsin10 are examples of degrees that serve the need of legal study by scholars of other disciplinary backgrounds or whose principal purpose is more to teach the basics of US laws to prepare participants for the LLM or SJD courses than it is to deepen legal knowledge. With this understanding, we have discarded the professors of those degrees who do not also hold traditional master of law degrees. One problem is that although the MAs, MPhils and diplomas from British or European institutions may well be no less significant, their confirmation was impossible unless the information best available, such as a resume of each professor, specified the same as comparable to an LLM or traditional master of law degree. Those professors as vague or impossible to confirm degrees have, therefore, been foregone without consideration. On the other hand, LLM programs are becoming more specialized to focus on topics of public interest or other special legal merit. Most notably, the LLM in taxations offered by NYU impacted much on the jurisprudence, and the environmental law program by Vermont notwithstanding its degree-based impact had a stark presence as a successful example of specialization11. In some cases, even the SJD program is trending toward specialization as we see in the Pace University’s program for environmental law, Case Western’s program for health law and University of Florida’s SJD for taxation12. The graduate law programs are diverse according to the context of each school and display varying gross size differences. The size of each graduating class was confirmed to the best of available evidence, for which the LLM Guide of World Universities was an invaluable help. The chatting space of interested students as well as each school’s website also served as a source of verification about the LLM class size. The final number has been adjusted by adding five to six SJD admissions, which is reflected in the whole size of the graduate law programs. Information from students and other interested actors was thought to be crucial to know the nature and quality of these programs. Across the webpages of alumni chatrooms, the LLMs seemingly had many interests about the admission policy and statistics of the
programs, while the SJDs emphasized their scholarly experience along with the general prestige of law schools13. Besides the generalized law school rankings, a more focused ranking on LLM program was available as assessed by the American Universities Admission Program (AUAP)14. My previous study on the consulting based-ranking of SJD program also could be referenced in this respect (Kim, Ju, & Khatun, 2015) .
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Therefore, this study is indicative, but not an absolute measure of performance since the preferences of graduates are not all inclusive and performance measures can be diverse. For example, Ruthann Robson, a Berkeley LLM graduate and professor of CUNY, was acclaimed as a best law professor in the nation by Harvard, which is squarely within the expected role of a law professor. She also is a very competent researcher with approximately 1000 citations, but could not be so acclaimed if purely measured on the basis of her numbers and research impact. Other high ranked law schools showed good numbers as indicated by
The law schools of Midwestern region or Committee of Institutional Cooperation (CIC) schools fared well, and Illinois, Michigan, Chicago and Wisconsin were rated highly. That appears because these law schools have a strong research tradition university-wide and inherent passion in the region for academics. As has been introduced, this study is an all-time conceptualization as a kind of semi-Shapiro’s. However, the earliness of university education could have some impact, but seems not definitive since Stanford already yielded LLMs and JSDs in the 1960s, which is the temporal foundation of this study. The region usually would be considered a rust belt in terms of econo-political transformation, and its impact on academia would not be minimal18. But the prospect is not entirely gloomy if the academia would have a lagged impact as we see in the cases of Oxford and Cambridge at the global rating, which are the universities of past global hegemony19. Furthermore, the promise of redevelopment for the rust belt is often a top list for the presidential election. Given that the econo-political impact on the culture, intelligence and public education is not definitive, the strategy of each university and law schools in the region would be a more probable factor to address the challenges that they face, especially with respect to the quality of graduate law programs. Actually, the current trend of US college graduates shows a likely preference for medical schools or PhDs than JDs, which threatens the traditional business of law school administrators. The highly ranked law schools may not be affected, but those of upper-middle and middle range are pressed for a new response against the diminished number of applicants. Low ranked law schools may have to redefine their prospects with a new rationalization and inputs of professors or investment. Hence, the strategic aspect of school administration cannot be minimized merely because of the public esteem and dignity of legal education. It is needless to mention its importance when considering the educational effect of graduate laws programs.
Another noteworthy finding is that Yale has recently created a law PhD program besides the traditional research doctorate, JSD, which perhaps is similar to the PhD in Asian law provided by the University of Washington20. The title of PhD is more significant if we examine the astronomical number of citations from the economics or biological PhDs and the journals of other discipline, such as Physical Letters or IEES. Three recent graduates of Yale law PhD successfully landed law professorships in the job market this year, which could be a variable in the future to test the mode of graduate law in terms of scholarly productivity (Brian Leiter’s, 2106) . Of course, they were not included in this study since its scope is restricted to professors with years of engagement. The University of Washington, however, does not seem to reap much in this regard despite the degree name since the PhDs majoring in Asian law are less significant than other areas of legal topic. However, we can find a good society of Asian law research in Lung-chu Chen who has been active in New York Law School with nearly 2000 citations and collaborated with his eminent peers, such as MacDougal. In this context, the general prestige also visibly matters to a graduate’s profile. Other strong law schools produce good professors with the LLM and SJD background, such as Northwestern, George Washington, Duke and Boston Universities, and University of Texas-Austin. The general law school rankings can be said less relevant at the University of Florida, which is relatively low in the law school ranking and is represented with 26 professors, but is above the University of Chicago and University of Berkeley in this variable. Nevertheless, the citations of Florida are more than small with 2121, which comes in some contrast with those of traditionally strong law schools.
We often assume that LLMs or SJDs are for foreign attorneys who wish to learn about US laws and related specialized subjects. The ads and websites of law schools for their graduate law programs also express a penchant for the attraction of foreign attorneys. Duke, for example, so introduced its graduate law program, which may possibly create a misunderstanding if it is presumed to be exclusively for foreign lawyers. However, the study found good results at Duke, and a considerable number of Duke LLMs native of the US currently work as law professors. The citations of Duke amounted to 5272. Another interesting finding is that the LLMs of the US Military’s Judge Advocate School of Law are represented more than some law schools with 13 law professors, but with a relatively small number of citations, totaling around 1348. John Marshall law school, a relatively low ranked law school boasts approximately 10,000 citations, which is a significant number. This is due in no small part to one productive scholar, and shows an important relevance of the popular approach in library science entitled “most cited” legal scholars, law review articles, and “most cited” journals of other disciplines. Most LLMs and SJDs perform better or comparably with the JD professors without an LLM degree. Assuming that, on average, the citations of a normal professor range around 150 - 300, the numbers are comparable with the professors of other backgrounds, such as JDs without an LLM degree. The most notable dual degree form was found to be JD/PhDs as expected-though not presented in this study. The reason for this mix is indicated to be a preference of students for exposure to the different modes of study between the taught-based and research-based degrees, and seems to reflect on the interdisciplinary context of legal research. Another reason seems to lie in the convenience that the mix would be popular or even commercialized as a set in American graduate education, as we also see in the case of MD/PhDs.
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The distribution of faculty and citations had been tabulated specifically according to the rank of law schools except for the Extra group, and within six categories25. As appears in
100 or 200 citations indicates a good performance for law professors, we can confidently assert that 500 - 1000 citations should be interpreted as leaving a remarkable footprint in US jurisprudence. These numbers are steady and good indicators of the product of many law professors who are unlisted in the Shapiro’s “most cited” category. A final ranking, as shown
Through the investigation, we have learned that a knowledge economy (savoir-faire) has entwined law and the actions of people in society, and growingly became edged to explain their behavior and moral and professional conduct. The growth of economy and development of technology are two essential horns leading them bullishly to a more competitive model of growth needing a constant mode of new learning. The knowledge economy has an indispensable ingredient, which is the “research” applied to each respective field, and that serves as a base or ultimate background to claim its cause for being and the participants’ identities within the community. As we see, law schools sell their educational services by sporting their own libraries independent from the university-wide ones, and their compilations of books and articles compiled through heritage and history have been critical assets to reap their relatively high tuitions. On the other hand, legal education also should serve to increase practical knowledge and ability to practice law instantly upon the graduation (Edwards, 1992) . This combination has been a critical dyad, long embedded on the minds and hearts of legal educators and system builders. Through this hybrid, law professors hope to find their meaning and purpose, and judges and state attorneys enjoy their social status along with their affordable salaries. It is well known that income differentials upon graduation are a component of the law school’s ranking and also are predetermined in part by it. We generally do not dispute that the success of the legal education and its system are highly dependent on the research and the database they produce (Savoy, 1970) . This would be a reason why almost all law schools recruit graduates with the master of library science (the other MLS than master of legal studies) degree for their library professorship. Their depository shelves are enormously stacked with scholarly sources and materials of law practice, such as federal reporters and state or regional legal documents. The authority and social interactions of law personnel are ultimately based on the research or practice products between the duality of practice and scholarship (Kennedy, 1982) , and it has been hitherto unknown whether the graduate laws could perform comparably with O. W. Holmes, one of most impactful legal scholar and judge or with Richard Posner, Mark A. Lemley and C. R. Sunstein, and other most productive researchers with non-graduate laws. Is the graduate law degree merely an ornament or a dead casket found within the profiles of century old professors? Despite their relatively minority status, their share of representation within the whole faculty, their mindedness and mode of intellectual activity (i.e., more independent and subjective-yet scientific, and tending toward seminar-based learning and semi-scholarly term papers), their impact on specialization and aspects of personal stimulation through the scholarly decades, all seems still to be meaningful to the extent they impact the vestiges of scholarship. We hope that the findings and implications of this paper can help us to appreciate the nature and purpose of graduate law programs and the phenomenon of the lives and products of people relating with them (Patton, 1990; Reynolds, 2015) .
Limitation in this research must be present as evidenced by the lack of prior research on this subject. Since the work is exploratory to an extent, there are many issues that need to be discussed further or refined. The expectation is that subsequent research could make this work more perfect and developed to suit the goals of legal education as well as the needs of the legal teaching market. Although it is designed to impart the significant impact of degree based research and the contribution of graduate versus entering professors, it’s clear, for example, that publications have been curtailed under the assumption that they are produced as proportional to the number of faculty. That result could be improved with further research. This research also can be complemented with the future work, for example, dealing with a comparison between the JDs or LLBs and graduate laws.
One notes through this research that the international ranking scheme has recently grown to show the socio-culturally ubiquitous implications of the global village. The education market may likely experience a transnationalism akin to McDonald® and its presence within the global corners of neighborhoods or communities. Higher education is the most important public venue to breed leadership in each field and at each level. Educators and readers of ranking sources need to be mindful of this change, rather than focusing merely on the traditional national context of public education and consciousness. Scientific indicators and field data indicate important significance in the international dimension, which differs from the devotional loyalty or general public consciousness within the nation or local community. For example, it now has to be odd to say that Harvard or Yale and its departments are plenary to other schools or departments without any more competitive data. A contemporary understanding of social or community leadership should be different from what it was before the new millennium and the burgeoning years of new international ranking sources, such as QS and ARWU, expanding now through the Times and USWR. Without this change of mind, we may propagate an unwholesome and pernicious propaganda or quandary to inadvertently harm the development and promotion of potential national leaders or prospective national elites in various fields, such as politics, business and academic world, who, of course, are often highly educated. That is because of the substantial impact that such international dealings may have on scholarship and social and political discourse in the local context, not to mention the glocalization effect. This aspect can be further related to the increasing need for interdependence of scientific minds, the global public or open access movement of the scholarly community as well as the implications of growing competition within the knowledge economy. This paper can hopefully contribute to this area of interest with the expectation that further research will complement, critique and develop it.
Kim, K., Borhanian, S., Chung, K.-T., Park, Y.-H., Lee, W.-S., & Kim, J.-H. (2016). The Graduate Law Degree Holders in the Legal Education Market: Evidence from the US, Rankings and Implications. Beijing Law Review, 7, 371-399. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/blr.2016.74031
Graduate Law Ranking | Institutions | Average Column (Rankings of four variables in the | US News/QS2 | AUAP Global LLM Ranking | Consulting-Based Research Doctorate in law Ranking (15/15/15/55)3 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
14 (1) | Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison | 12 | 33/51 - 150 | 1 | |
2 (2) | Yale Univ. | 14 | 1/4 | 12 | 2 |
3 (3) | Harvard Univ. | 15 | 2/1 | 5 | 3 |
4 | Univ. of Oxford | 16 | NA/2 - 3 | 5 | |
5 (4) | Univ. of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 31 | 8/30 - 31 | Around 9 | |
6 (5) | Stanford Univ. | 33 | 2/5 - 7 | Around 7 | |
7 (6) | Columbia Univ. | 37 | 4/10 - 11 | 4 | 6 |
7 (6) | Univ. of Virginia | 37 | 8/39 - 100 | Around 9 | |
9 (8) | Univ. of Chicago | 40 | 4/9 - 15 | 11 | 4 |
10 | Univ. of Cambridge | 42 | NA/2 - 3 | 6 | |
10 (9) | NYU | 42 | 6/5 | 3 | Around 8 |
12 (10) | UC-Berkeley | 44 | 8/9 - 17 | Around 9 | |
13 (11) | Univ. of Illinois-UC | 49 | 40/151 - 200 | Around 21 | |
14 (12) | Georgetown Univ. | 52 | 14/17 - 27 | 20 | Around 12 |
15 (13) | Temple Univ. | 53 | 50/Behind the Top 200 s | Around 31 | |
16 (14) | George Washington Univ. | 61 | 25/51 - 150 | Around 15 | |
17 (15) | Northwestern Univ. | 64 | 12/45 - 100 | Around 11 | |
18 (16) | Duke Univ. | 70 | 11/39 - 47 | 8 | Around 10 |
19 (17) | US Military | 72 | NA/NA | Not Pertinent5 | |
20 (18) | Univ. of Florida | 78 | 48/101 - 200 | Around 32 | |
21 (19) | SMU (Southern Methodist) | 81 | 45/Behind the Top 200s | Around 22 | |
22 (20) | Univ. of Washington | 83 | 33/101 - 150 | Around 20 | |
23 (21) | Univ. of Pennsylvania | 85 | 7/24 - 29 | 2 | 6 |
24 (22) | Univ. of Texas-Austin | 93 | 15/51 - 100 | Not Pertinent | |
25 (23) | Boston Univ. | 94 | 20/51 - 100 | 7 | Not Pertinent |
1The superannuated professors active with an emeritus title or other professorship in scope almost entirely were graduate law students around 1960’s through 1990’s. In order to understand this study in terms of a graduate law guide for the student’s choice and investment decision on each school’s graduate program, the temporal relevance could span from 1990 through 2020. The year of 1990 through the current would be a burgeoning or flourishing and culminating period of scholarly activity for the professors in scope, and the year of 2020 would be around the time of their diminished impact. The data compiled in this paper should be read as set for the time of late July, 2016, meaning that they constantly are changing and augmenting. 2The QS ranking has been proximate through four years of its production (2013-2016) for a law subject ranking. 3You may refer to the ranking at DOI: 10.11648/j.ijp.20150304.11. 4The rank is global while the rank in parenthesis is national. 5“Not Pertinent” means that the school does not offer the SJD program in any official manner.
Total of APEs within the Law School | Around 6000 |
---|---|
Faculty with the Graduate Law Degrees | 1371 (Excluding the U of London, Paris and the rest of law schools) |
Ratio | 0.2285 |
25 Institutions | Graduates Yearly | Faculty Representations (=Number of faculty with the graduate law degree from each institution) |
---|---|---|
Boston | 100 | 9 |
Columbia | 218 | 125 |
Duke | 78 | 15 |
Georgetown | 456 | 168 |
George Washington | 305 | 40 |
Harvard | 185 | 256 |
NYU | 445 | 230 |
Northwestern | 95 | 19 |
SMU | 30 | 7 |
Stanford | 85 | 34 |
Temple | 49 | 58 |
UC-Berkeley | 85 | 22 |
U. Cambridge | 159 | 31 |
U. Chicago | 85 | 13 |
U. Florida | 65 | 26 |
U. Illinois | 76 | 26 |
U. Michigan | 35 | 39 |
U. Oxford | 55 | 25 |
U. Penn | 123 | 11 |
U. Texas | 60 | 8 |
U. Virginia | 55 | 39 |
U. Washington | 80 | 9 |
U. Wisconsin | 15 | 40 |
US Military | 20 | 13 |
Yale | 30 | 121 |
25 Institutions | Total Citations | Rep./Graduates | Citations/Rep. | Citations/Graduates |
---|---|---|---|---|
Boston | 1267 (23) | 0.09 (24) | 140.77 (22) | 12.67 (25) |
Columbia | 60,338 (5) | 0.57 (8) | 482.70 (13) | 276.77 (9) |
Duke | 5272 (18) | 0.19 (18) | 351.47 (16) | 67.59 (18) |
Georgetown | 48,134 (7) | 0.37 (13) | 286.51 (17) | 105.56 (15) |
George Washington | 24,825 (12) | 0.13 (21) | 620.63 (11) | 81.39 (17) |
Harvard | 228,863 (1) | 1.38 (3) | 894.00 (7) | 1237.10 (4) |
NYU | 80,984 (4) | 0.52 (9) | 352.10 (15) | 181.99 (14) |
Northwestern | 8080 (17) | 0.2 (17) | 425.26 (14) | 85.05 (16) |
SMU | 1057 (24) | 0.23 (16) | 151 (21) | 35.23 (20) |
Stanford | 32,260 (9) | 0.40 (11) | 948.82 (6) | 379.53 (7) |
Temple | 11,194 (16) | 1.18 (4) | 193 (20) | 228.45 (13) |
UC-Berkeley | 20,996 (14) | 0.26 (15) | 954.36 (5) | 247.01 (10) |
U Cambridge | 37,057 (8) | 0.19 (18) | 1195.38 (4) | 233.06 (12) |
U Chicago | 30,398 (10) | 0.15 (20) | 2338.31 (2) | 357.62 (8) |
U Florida | 2121 (21) | 0.40 (11) | 81.58 (25) | 32.63 (21) |
U Illinois | 18,317 (15) | 0.34 (14) | 704.5 (9) | 241.01 (11) |
U Michigan | 26,238 (11) | 1.11 (5) | 672.77 (10) | 749.66 (5) |
U Oxford | 90,219 (2) | 0.45 (10) | 3608.76 (1) | 1640.35 (3) |
U Penn | 2676 (19) | 0.09 (24) | 243.27 (19) | 21.76 (23) |
U Texas | 1055 (25) | 0.13 (21) | 131.88 (23) | 17.58 (24) |
U Virginia | 22,990 (13) | 0.71 (6) | 589.49 (12) | 418 (6) |
U WA | 2245 (20) | 0.11 (23) | 249.44 (18) | 28.06 (22) |
U Wisconsin | 52,023 (6) | 2.66 (2) | 1300.58 (3) | 3468.2 (1) |
US Military | 1348 (22) | 0.65 (7) | 103.69 (24) | 67.4 (19) |
Yale | 86,667 (3) | 4.03 (1) | 716.26 (8) | 2888.9 (2) |
1The number in parenthesis indicates a rank among 25 institutions. The
24 Institutions2 | Representations (APEs)/Citations | ||
---|---|---|---|
Boston University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile3 | LNI4 | LNI | |
2nd percentile | LNI | LNI | |
3rd percentile | 2 | 828 | |
4th percentile | LNI | LNI | |
5th percentile | 6 | 394 | |
Extra | 1 | 45 | |
Total | 9 | 1267 | |
Most cited | Paul L. Caron | ||
Columbia University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 9 | 21,530 | |
2nd percentile | 16 | 7844 | |
3rd percentile | 37 | 11,501 | |
4th percentile | 17 | 4996 | |
5th percentile | 34 | 8385 | |
Extra | 12 | 6082 | |
Total | 125 | 60,338 | |
Most cited | Robert. P. Merges; Lea Brilmayer; M.A. Drumbl; Leila N. Sadat | ||
Duke University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 4 | 2570 | |
2nd percentile | 4 | 2388 | |
3rd percentile | 3 | 173 | |
4th percentile | 1 | 21 | |
5th percentile | 2 | LNI | |
Extra | 1 | 120 | |
Total | 15 | 5272 | |
Most cited | R. Krotoszynski; H. W. Baade; J. A. Tanford | ||
Georgetown University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 31 | 9319 | |
2nd percentile | 25 | 15,005 | |
3rd percentile | 36 | 10,086 |
4th percentile | 19 | 3645 | |
---|---|---|---|
5th percentile | 49 | 6982 | |
Extra | 8 | 3097 | |
Total | 168 | 48,134 | |
Most cited | D. A. Harris; J. A. Barron; J. G. Hodge; J. Dunoff; N. R. Cahn; A. Camacho | ||
George Washington University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 3 | 4005 | |
2nd percentile | 4 | 1200 | |
3rd percentile | 12 | 5177 | |
4th percentile | 7 | 3689 | |
5th percentile | 11 | 10,174 | |
Extra | 3 | 580 | |
Total | 40 | 24,825 | |
Most cited | M. Cherif Bassiouni; Michael Blumm; J. B. Ruhl; S. L. Schooner | ||
Harvard University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 66 | 144,000 | |
2nd percentile | 35 | 17,803 | |
3rd percentile | 53 | 26,343 | |
4th percentile | 27 | 10,273 | |
5th percentile | 53 | 14,614 | |
Extra | 22 | 15,830 | |
Total | 256 | 228,863 | |
Most cited | Robert Howse; L. A. Bebchuk; Paul Robinson; H. P. Monaghan; M. J. Matsuda; M. Wyman; Lynn M. Lopucki; M. S. Moore; Richard W. Wright | ||
New York University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 31 | 46,979 | |
2nd percentile | 34 | 8242 | |
3rd percentile | 45 | 6542 | |
4th percentile | 27 | 3996 | |
5th percentile | 63 | 6625 |
Extra | 30 | 8600 | |
---|---|---|---|
Total | 230 | 80,984 | |
Most cited | John C. Coffee; Peter H. Schuck; L. C. McClain; B. E. Hernandez; Susan Daicoff | ||
Northwestern University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 1 | 20 | |
2nd percentile | 1 | 50 | |
3rd percentile | 8 | 4135 | |
4th percentile | 1 | 1430 | |
5th percentile | 6 | 345 | |
Extra | 2 | 2100 | |
Total | 19 | 8080 | |
Most cited | V. P. Nanda; F. Teson; Lung-chu Chen | ||
Stanford University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 5 | 19,608 | |
2nd percentile | 7 | 3631 | |
3rd percentile | 5 | 4118 | |
4th percentile | 3 | 2170 | |
5th percentile | 14 | 2733 | |
Extra | LNI | ||
Total | 34 | 32,260 | |
Most cited | Neil W. Netanel; Robin West; Dan L. Burk; Ted Schneyer; F. Valdes | ||
Temple University | faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | LNI | LNI | |
2nd percentile | 1 | 180 | |
3rd percentile | 13 | 3375 | |
4th percentile | 13 | 3435 | |
5th percentile | 25 | 3314 | |
Extra | 6 | 890 | |
Total | 58 | 11,194 | |
Most cited | E. S. Podgor; R. K. Neumann; Llewellyn J. Gibbons |
University of California-Berkeley | Faculty | Citations | |
---|---|---|---|
1st percentile | 9 | 17,325 | |
2nd percentile | 2 | 410 | |
3rd percentile | 4 | 911 | |
4th percentile | 1 | 1170 | |
5th percentile | 5 | 1175 | |
Extra | 1 | 5 | |
Total | 22 | 20,996 | |
Most cited | P. C. Mavroidis; Ugo Mattei; Francesco Parisi; Gideon Parchomovsky; Ruthann Robson | ||
University of Cambridge | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 7 | 28,049 | |
2nd percentile | 6 | 3268 | |
3rd percentile | LNI | LNI | |
4th percentile | 1 | 60 | |
5th percentile | 10 | 1813 | |
Extra | 7 | 3867 | |
Total | 31 | 37,057 | |
Most cited | J. H. H. Weiler; John H. Langbein; S. D. Murphy; Ralf Michaels; Kevin Outterson | ||
University of Chicago | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 3 | 27,300 | |
2nd percentile | 4 | 2406 | |
3rd percentile | 1 | 250 | |
4th percentile | 2 | 393 | |
5th percentile | 3 | 49 | |
Extra | LNI | LNI | |
Total | 13 | 30,398 | |
Most cited | Lawrence Friedman; G. P Fletcher; W. H. Page | ||
University of Florida | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | LNI | LNI | |
2nd percentile | LNI | LNI |
3rd percentile | 5 | 1312 | |
---|---|---|---|
4th percentile | 5 | 223 | |
5th percentile | 11 | 451 | |
Extra | 5 | 135 | |
Total | 26 | 2121 | |
Most cited | G. L. Germain | ||
University of Illinois | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 3 | 3500 | |
2nd percentile | 4 | 9500 | |
3rd percentile | 3 | 1820 | |
4th percentile | 7 | 1391 | |
5th percentile | 7 | 1816 | |
Extra | 2 | 290 | |
Total | 26 | 18,317 | |
Most cited | Dan Dobbs; J. Norton Moore; R. P. Malloy | ||
University of Michigan | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 10 | 16,225 | |
2nd percentile | 8 | 4102 | |
3rd percentile | 6 | 1680 | |
4th percentile | 4 | 1649 | |
5th percentile | 6 | 1222 | |
Extra | 5 | 1360 | |
Total | 39 | 26,238 | |
Most cited | R. E. Scott; Gerald Torres; D. Rendleman; Harold G. Maier; ZJB Plater | ||
University of Oxford | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 14 | 85,437 | |
2nd percentile | LNI | LNI | |
3rd percentile | 6 | 1033 | |
4th percentile | LNI | LNI | |
5th percentile | 2 | 949 | |
Extra | 3 | 2800 | |
Total | 25 | 90,219 |
Most cited | Joseph Raz; John Finnis; Jeremy Waldron; Benedict Kingsbury; Stephanos Bibas; MW Janis; RN Gardner | ||
---|---|---|---|
University of Pennsylvania | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 1 | 120 | |
2nd percentile | 2 | 216 | |
3rd percentile | 2 | 40 | |
4th percentile | LNI | LNI | |
5th percentile | 2 | 1980 | |
Extra | 4 | 320 | |
Total | 11 | 2676 | |
Most cited | David Kairys | ||
University of Texas | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 2 | 700 | |
2nd percentile | LNI | LNI | |
3rd percentile | 1 | 63 | |
4th percentile | 2 | 83 | |
5th percentile | 3 | 209 | |
Extra | LNI | LNI | |
Total | 8 | 1055 | |
Most Cited | Dennis J. Hutchinson | ||
University of Virginia | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 5 | 5602 | |
2nd percentile | 6 | 4890 | |
3rd percentile | 6 | 3342 | |
4th percentile | 6 | 872 | |
5th percentile | 11 | 1746 | |
Extra | 5 | 6538 | |
Total | 39 | 22,990 | |
Most cited | C. Slobogin; J. J. Paust; S. D. Murphy; Edward Brunet | ||
University of Washington | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | LNI | LNI | |
2nd percentile | 4 | 2200 |
3rd percentile | LNI | LNI | |
---|---|---|---|
4th percentile | 2 | LNI | |
5th percentile | 3 | 45 | |
Extra | LNI | LNI | |
Total | 9 | 2245 | |
Most cited | John O Haley; Toshiko Takenaka | ||
University of Wisconsin | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 9 | 45,860 | |
2nd percentile | 1 | 680 | |
3rd percentile | 16 | 3118 | |
4th percentile | 7 | 736 | |
5th percentile | 1 | 96 | |
Extra | 6 | 1533 | |
Total | 40 | 52,023 | |
Most cited | W. LaFave; Kimberle Crenshaw; Catherine Fisk; M. Goodwin; Jan G. Laitos | ||
US Military (Judge Advocate) | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 1 | 150 | |
2nd percentile | 2 | 600 | |
3rd percentile | 3 | 165 | |
4th percentile | 1 | 53 | |
5th percentile | 6 | 380 | |
Extra | LNI | LNI | |
Total | 13 | 1348 | |
Most cited | E. Talbot Jensen; Eugene R. Milhizer | ||
Yale University | Faculty | Citations | |
1st percentile | 31 | 44,493 | |
2nd percentile | 15 | 3194 | |
3rd percentile | 20 | 2531 | |
4th percentile | 10 | 8578 |
5th percentile | 32 | 18,699 | |
---|---|---|---|
Extra | 13 | 9172 | |
Total | 121 | 86,667 | |
Most cited | W. Michael Reisman; Gideon Parchomovsky; L. L. Riskin; Chinkin Crhristine; Henry Manne; L. Brickman |
1The listing was made in alphabetical order of school name. “Most cited” below had not been made of order that does not indicate more counts or comparison with other schools. The names had been cursorily selected that just were illustrative to represent each school. 2Another institution for the final ranking is the Southern Methodist law school as listed in
Faculty | Citations | |
---|---|---|
University of London | 31 | 26,042 |
University of Paris | 10 | 10,510 |
John Marshall Law School | 6 | 9140 |
Lewis & Clark | 5 | 1402 |
NIU-Ireland | 5 | 456 |
Pace U. | 6 | 1200 |
SMU | 7 | 1057 |
Tulane U. | 6 | 59 |
U. of Arkansas | 5 | 650 |
U. of Denver | 5 | 677 |
U. of Houston | 7 | 277 |
U. of Missouri | 7 | 672 |
Washington U. St. Louis | 5 | 2830 |
1The most cited graduate law degree holders are M. Cherif Bassiouni for John Marshall Law School and George C. Thomas for the Washington University St. Louis.
・ U. Paris and U. London had just been given the statistics that were excluded from the final ranking scheme since the information of status was not confirmed. The ranking would be around the mid-low (15th - 20th) if approximate and included.
Result (Nothing implicated with order) | |
---|---|
Schools (Faculty/ Citations) | UCLA (4/1590)1; Hebrew University (2/22,550); U. of Vienna (1/600); Emory University (5/30); Goethe U. (1/0); Belgrade U. (1/110); U. of Sydney (1/320); U. of Warwick (2/300); U. of Edinburgh (3/2400); Cornell U. (2/320); U. of Utah (2/450); U. of Toronto (4/1695); UDC law school (1/0); Queens U. (1/597); Hamburg U. (2/170); U. of Arizona (1/145); U. of Cologne (2/850); Free U. Brussels (2/485); Pontifical U. (2/134); U. of Dares Salaam (1/0); U. of Brescia (1/110); U. of Georgia (1/30); Penn State (1/0); McGill U. (4/936); U. of Buenos Aires (2/524); UC Hastings (1/2); U. of Geneva (1/1050); York U. (3/2352); U. of Hong Kong (1/0); U. of Exeter (2/370); U. of Telaus (1/392); U. of Freiburg (1/250); St. Johns U. (1/0); U. of New Hampshire-Franklin Pierce (4/92); College William and Mary (1/20); Cardozo Law School (1/0); U. of Amsterdam (2/19,780); Charles U. Prague (3/688); U. of Alabama (1/0); Jean Maria Lyon (1/0); Katholiek U. (1/160); Brooklyn U. (1/15); U. of Warsaw (1/270); U. of Freiburg (1/800); U. of Konstanz (2/83); U. of Oslo (1/120); UBC (3/410); U. of Wayne State (5/1319); American U. (3/620); U. of Notre Dame (4/435); Catholic U. (1/719); Antioch-Washington D. C. (1/398); U. of Complutense Madrid (1/0); U. of Delhi (1/300); Fudan U. (1/0); U. of Manitoba (1/6); U of Santa Clara (2/60); U. of Bonn (1/900); U. of Sheffield (1/390); U. of Malawi (1/390); Case Western Reserve U. (1/100); U. of Nottingham (2/1183); U of Miami (2/0); U del Pais Vasco (1/2); Pontifical U.-Italy (1/21); Indiana U.-Bloomington (1/0); U. of Queensland (1/0); U. of Vermont (2/434); Widener U. (1/0); Golden Gate U. (2/73); Kiev State (1/159); Free U. of Amsterdam (1/1159); SUNY-Buffalo (1/0); U. of Singapore (1/104); U. of Aberdeen (1/22); U. of Lagos (1/11); Ohio Northern U (1/0); St. Thomas U. (1/33); U. of Tubingen (1/1230); U. of San Francisco (2/117); U. of Iowa (1/344); U. of Connecticut (2/62); Boston College (1/0); U. of Heidelberg (1/900); U. of Wellington (1/100); Frankfurt U. (1/5,000); U. Augsburg (1/700); U. of Ljubljana (1/3000); U. of Louvain (1/300); Liege U. (1/1300); Leiden U (2/2494); Gottingen U. (1/200); U. of Marburg (1/200); Marquette U. (1/0); Kiel U. (1/855); Louisiana State U. (1/133); Bremen U. (1/60); Loyola U. Chicago (1/40); Bristol U. (1/800); U. of Montreal (1/1600); U. de Nantes (1/1600) |
The degree origin not included thus far had been distributed across the universities of European states, such as Poland (1/490), Euro Institute (2/265), Germany (1/105), Spain (3/0), Italy (1/3000), and some others in a minimal number. India (1/850) besides the Puerto Rico (2/0) also had a representation. 1The most cited graduate law degree holder is W. J. Aceves for UCLA.