Do Devout Law Schools Take A Hit In The U.S. News Peer Reputation Rankings?

Following up on last Sunday's post, 2023 Religious Law School Rankings:  Do Devout Law Schools Take a Hit in the U.S. News Peer Review Rankings, preLaw (Winter 2023):

Liberty University School of Law ranks No. 1 on our list of Most Devout Law Schools. It also has the dubious distinction of being ranked last in peer assessment by U.S. News & World Report, receiving a score of 1.2 out of 5.

It's not alone. Ave Maria School of Law, which is No. 3 on our list, is tied with Liberty for last place. Regent Law and Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama, are not far behind, with a 1.3 in peer assessment. In fact, the 20 schools on our Most Devout list average 1.96 in the peer rank­ing, while the average for all law schools is 2.51. ...

Most all schools of faith seem to see their U.S. News ranking dragged down by peer assessment. Brigham Young University - J. Reuben Clark Law School, for example, is ranked 23rd overall by U.S. News, but it comes in 52nd for peer assessment. It is one of only two schools on our Most Devout list have peer assessments higher than the national average {Pepperdine is the other].

Some law professors feel the poor scores for religious schools is a vestige of religious bigotry. They say it takes longer for schools of faith than it does for other schools to build a strong reputation.

Mike Simkovic, a professor at USC Gould School of Law and longtime com­mentator on the U.S. News rankings, said the peer rankings move slowly. "They probably reflect perceptions based on the past and do not update quickly as schools improve or decline," he said.

Simkovic said it is hard to determine bias in the rankings, and he points to Georgetown University Law Center, Notre Dame Law School and Fordham University School of Law as schools of faith that rank high.

But none of those schools make our Most Devout list.

Many critics point out that those schools have long since moved away from faith in the classroom, and in some cases the schools have stood opposed to their churches' doc­trines. 

But many deans of the Most Devout Schools don't feel it is necessary to aban­don their faith to improve in the rankings and capture the admiration of their peers. One dean pointed out that some non-faith schools, such as University of Alabama and Arizona State, saw their peer assessment scores rise after they rose in the rankings because of other factors.

And many of the Most Devout law schools are fairly young. Liberty University was founded in 2004, Ave Maria in 1999 and Regent in 1986. Even the higher ranked schools — BYU, founded in 1972, and Pepperdine, founded in 1969 — are new compared to the top 20 schools in the U.S. News rankings. Only one law school in the top 20 was founded after 1900. That's UCLA, founded in 1949. The aver­age founding date for the top 20 schools is 1867.

The good news for schools of faith is that peer reviews will have less influence in the near future. U.S. News recently announced that it will place less weight on those scores starting this year [12.5%, down from 25%]

None of the the Most Devout law schools received a lower peer assessment in the new rankings released in May. The peer ranking of seven of the Most Devout schools increased by 0.1 (Pepperdine 2.9; Creighton 2.0; St. Mary's 1.9; Campbell 1.6; Regent 1.4; Ave Maria 1.3; Liberty 1.3).

The overall ranking of the seven Most Devout schools in the Top 100 all increased in the May rankings (BYU 22 (+1), Pepperdine 45 (+7), Baylor 49 (+9), Seton Hall 56 (+17), St. John's 60 (+24), St. Thomas 96 (+31), Gonzaga 99 (+17)). Catholic fell out of the Top 100 to 122 (-28)).

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