Indiana Law Journal Publishes Symposium on The Next Generation of Law School Rankings

The Indiana Law Journal has published the papers from the symposium I organized with my friend and colleague Rafael Gely on The Next Generation of Law School Rankings, which was held on April 15, 2005.  We are grateful that the generous financial support of Foundation Press, Thomson-West, and Indiana-Bloomington has made possible, with the cooperation of the Indiana law Journal, placement of the articles and commentary on SSRN's Conference Site to allow the public ready access to the abstracts and papers of the symposium issue, The Next Generation of Law School Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 1-409 (2006):

Introduction

• Paul L. Caron (Cincinnati) & Rafael Gely (Cincinnati), Dead Poets and Academic Progenitors: The Next Generation of Law School Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 1-12 (2006):

This Symposium is an outgrowth of our article, What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 1483 (2004). With the approaching twentieth anniversary of the first U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, it is a particularly propitious time to take a fresh look, to hear new voices, and to reconsider issues surrounding law school rankings. Many of America's most thoughtful law professors (as well as academics in other disciplines) gathered on April 15, 2005 at the Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington to discuss The Next Generation of Law School Rankings. The papers and commentary presented at the event and recorded in these pages reflect a wide array of creative, challenging, and captivating perspectives on the rankings tableau. In the pages that follow, we are confident that you will agree that we have fulfilled the goals we set for the Symposium:

The goal of this Symposium is to deepen our understanding of rankings and their effects on legal education. The participants in this Symposium will examine the need for law school rankings; the effects of rankings on legal education; and the various new approaches to addressing the public's insatiable demand for ever more and increasingly sophisticated rankings, which permeate not only legal education but also all aspects of American life.

We believe the Symposium papers and commentary make an enormous contribution to our understanding of rankings and their effects on legal education.

Framing the Rankings Debate

Articles

• Richard A. Posner (U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit), Law School Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 13-24 (2006)
• Cass R. Sunstein (Chicago), Ranking Law Schools:  A Market Test?, 81 Ind. L.J. 25-34 (2006)

Keynote Address

• Russell Korobkin (UCLA), Harnessing the Positive Power of Rankings:  A Response to Posner and Sunstein, 81 Ind. L.J. 35-45 (2006)

Commentary

• Brian Leiter (Texas), How to Rank Law Schools, 81 Ind. L.J. 47-52 (2006)

Ranking Methodologies

Articles

• Scott Baker (North Carolina), Stephen J. Choi (NYU) & G. Mitu Gulati (Georgetown), The Rat Race as an Information-Forcing Device, 81 Ind L.J. 53-82 (2006)
• Bernard S. Black (Texas) & Paul L. Caron (Cincinnati), Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83-139 (2006)
• Tracey George (Vanderbilt), An Empirical Study of Empirical Legal Scholarship: The Top Law Schools, 81 Ind. L.J. 141-61 (2006)
• William D. Henderson (Indiana) & Andrew P. Morriss (Case Western), Student Quality as Measured by LSAT Scores: Migration Patterns in the U.S. News Rankings Era, 81 Ind. L.J. 163-204 (2006)
• Michael Sauder (University of Iowa, Department of Sociology) & Wendy Nelson Espeland (Northwestern University, Department of Sociology), Strength in Numbers? The Advantages of Multiple Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 205-27 (2006)
• Jeffrey Evans Stake (Indiana), The Interplay Between Law School Rankings, Reputations, and Resource Allocation: Ways Rankings Mislead, 81 Ind. L.J. 229-70 (2006)

Commentary

• Lawrence A. Cunningham (Boston College), Scholarly Profit Margins: Reflections on the Web, 81 Ind. L.J. 271-83 (2006)
• Theodore Eisenberg (Cornell), Assessing the SSRN-Based Law School Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 285-91 (2006)
• Rafael Gely (Cincinnati), Segmented Rankings for Segmented Markets, 81 Ind. L.J. 293-98 (2006)
• Michael E. Solimine (Cincinnati), Status Seeking and the Allure and Limits of Law School Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 299-308 (2006)

Other Voices in the Rankings Debate

Articles

• Alex M. Johnson, Jr. (Minnesota), The Destruction of the Holistic Approach to Admissions: The Pernicious Effects of Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 309-58 (2006)
• Nancy B. Rapoport (Houston), Eating Our Cake and Having It, Too: Why Real Change is So Difficult in Law Schools, 81 Ind. L.J. 359-74 (2006)
• Sam Kamin (Denver), How the Blogs Saved Law School: Why a Diversity of Voices Will Undermine the U.S. News Rankings, 81 Ind. L.J. 375-81 (2006)

Commentary

• Rachel F. Moran (UC-Berkeley), Of Rankings and Regulation: Are the U.S. News & World Report Rankings Really a Subversive Force in Legal Education?, 81 Ind. L.J. 383-99 (2006)
• Patrick T. O'Day (Project Manager, Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE), Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research) & George D. Kuh (Chancellor’s Professor of Higher Education, Indiana University–Bloomington; Director, Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research), Assessing What Matters in Law School: The Law School Survey of Student Engagement, 81 Ind. L.J. 401-09 (2006)