The 10 Most-Cited Tax Faculty

Brian Leiter (Chicago) has announced that he will be releasing an updated ranking of the Ten Most-Cited U.S. Law Faculty in 11 areas of specialization, as measured by citations during the past five years (2009-2013).  He previewed the ranking today by releasing the ten most-cited tax faculty:

Rank	Tax Prof	Citations	Age
1	Michael Graetz (Columbia)	400	69
	David Weisbach (Chicago)	400	50
3	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	350	56
4	Daniel Shaviro (NYU)	340	56
5	Leandra Lederman (Indiana)	290	47
	Larry Zelenak (Duke)	290	58
7	Victor Fleischer (San Diego)	280	42
8	Edward Zelinsky (Cardozo)	270	58
9	Joseph Bankman (Stanford)	250	58
	Edward McCaffery (USC)	250	55

Leiter also lists four highly-cited scholars who work partly in tax.

In our article, Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Where?, Jennifer M. Kowal (Loyola-L.A.), Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.), Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) and I used a variation of Leiter's methodology in conducting a citation count study of the faculty in thirteen highly rated graduate tax programs  (pp. 28-29):

Rank	Graduate Tax Program Faculty	Citations
1	NYU	1917
2	Florida	1181
3	Georgetown	861
4	Miami	799
5	Northwestern	667
6	Boston University	614
7	Loyola-L.A.	475
8	San Diego	377
9	Villanova	177
10	SMU	139
11	Chapman	112
12	U. Washington	75
13	Denver	42

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• Phillips & Yoo: A Better Faculty Citation Rankings System (Sept. 7, 2012)
• The 18 Most-Cited Tax Faculty (May 18, 2010)
• The 15 Most-Cited Tax Faculty (Apr. 5, 2010)
• More on Faculty Citation Rankings (Nov. 28, 2007)
• The Most-Cited Tax Faculty (Nov. 16, 2007)
• Ten Most-Cited Tax Faculty (Aug. 20, 2007)

In our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83, 120-22 (2006), Bernie Black (Northwestern) and I examined the Top 25 tax faculty as measured by SSRN downloads, a practice I update monthly on TaxProf Blog.

Tax LL.M. Program Rankings by Tax Hiring Authorities

Following up on my post on the new 2015 U.S. News Tax Rankings: TaxTalent asked U.S. corporate tax hiring authorities to rank the following programs:

• Undergraduate Accounting
• MS Tax
• MAcc
• MAcc Tax
• MBA Tax
• JD Tax
• LL.M. Tax

For the LL.M. Tax Survey, respondents were asked to select up to five schools (out of 31) with LL.M. Tax programs that they hold in highest regard when hiring candidates.  Respondent Profile: 144 currently employed heads of corporate in-house tax departments.

For the J.D. Tax Survey, respondents were asked to select up to five schools (out of 20) with JD Tax programs that they hold in highest regard when hiring candidates.  It is a bizarre list of 20 law schools, as it omits 14 of the 15 schools ranked in tax by U.S. News (Georgetown is the only school ranked by both U.S. News and Tax Talent.) 

Phillips & Yoo: A Better Faculty Citation Rankings System

James Cleith Phillips & John Yoo (both of UC-Berkeley), The Cite Stuff: Inventing a Better Law Faculty Relevance Measure:

Citation rankings as a measure of scholarly quality are both controversial and popular. They provide a quantitative, albeit imperfect, measure of intellectual impact and productivity. But the number of times a scholar has been cited by his peers confers more than just bragging rights. They arguably help form the reputation of American legal scholars to the point that they have allegedly influenced faculty hiring decisions, and their collective impact may well shape the ranking of law schools themselves.

Arguably, the most well-known such metric for legal scholarship is the method used by Brian Leiter of the University of Chicago Law School and posted on his website. Despite the methodological rigorousness of the Leiter system, it suffers from some well-recognized limitations. It is biased in favor of schools with older, smaller faculties, for example, and against schools that do not produce as much peer-reviewed scholarship.

This study seeks to improve on earlier efforts by producing a more relevant and accurate citation-based ranking system. It produces a measure that explains 81% of the variation in the U.S. News academic peer rankings, implicitly revealing how schools could boost those rankings, and lists the most cited professors based on this new ranking methodology, both overall, amongst younger scholars, and in 20 areas of legal scholarship. This allows for the top school in each area of law to be calculated, which could be useful to aspiring J.D. students who desire to know the best school in the area(s) of law they are most interested in. Finally, this study proposes an alternative faculty ranking system focusing on the percentage of a law school faculty that are “All-Stars” (ranked in the top 10 in citations per year in an area of law). This alternative ranking system improves upon some of the weaknesses of previous faculty quality ranking methodologies and argues that citation-based studies do measure something important -- relevance of scholarship.

Here are the Top 10 Tax Professors in Total Cites Per Year:

1. Alan Auerbach (UC-Berkeley) (54.3)
2. Mihir Desai (Harvard) (54.0)
3. James Hines (Michigan) (52.4)
4. David Weisbach (Chicago) (45.4)
5. Daniel Shaviro (NYU) (44.1)
6. Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan) (40.9)
7. Michael Graetz (Columbia) (36.2)
8. Michael Knoll (Pennsylvania) (35.8)
9. Robert Green (Cornell) (33.6)
10. Thomas Brennan (Northwestern) (33.2)

Here are the Top 5 Law School Tax Faculties in Total Cites Per Year:

1. Harvard (188.2) (Mihir Desai, Louis Kaplow)
2. Michigan (93.3) (James Hines, Reuven Avi-Yonah)
3. UC-Berkeley (54.3) (Alan Auerbach)
4. Chicago (45.4) (David Weisbach)
5. NYU (44.1) (Daniel Shaviro)

Tax LL.M. Program Rankings by Tax Hiring Authorities

I previously blogged the 2012 and 2013 U.S. News Tax LL.M. program rankings:

2013 Rank	Grad Tax Program	2012 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Florida	2
3	Georgetown	3
4	Northwestern	4
5	Boston University	6
6	Miami	5
7	Loyola-L.A.	7
8	San Diego	8
9	Villanova	8
10	Denver	n/r
n/r	U. Washington	10
n/r	Chapman	11

(The 2008-2011 U.S. News Tax LL.M. rankings are here.)

JobsInTax.com, part of the TaxTalent network, has released another ranking of tax LL.M. programs, based on the responses of 151 heads of corporate tax departments:

Respondents were asked to select up to five schools (out of 32) with LLM Tax programs that they hold in the highest regard when hiring candidates. Schools were then ranked based on the total number of votes they received.

This is the first of a two-part survey, the second of which will ask the opinions of alumni of LLM Tax programs, in order to provide an index of which LLM Tax programs are consistently held in high regard by both alumni and tax hiring authorities. 

(Of course, several of these schools do not have Tax LL.M. programs (University of California, Kansas, Lewis & Clark, New Mexico, Richmond, Washington & Lee.)

For more on graduate tax program rankings, see Jennifer Kowal (Loyola-L.A.), Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.), Theodore Seto (Loyola-L.A.) & Paul Caron (Cincinnati), Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Where?.

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Updated Sept. 29, 2011:  Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his ranking of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through Sept. 9, 2011). To minimize the distortive effect of his own rankings articles, he has eliminated from Loyola-L.A.’s count downloads attributable to his own two most downloaded articles, neither of which pertains directly to tax. He has not eliminated downloads of non-tax articles from the counts of any other author.

		All-Time Downloads		Recent Downloads
1	Michigan	40,754	Michigan	7353
2	Harvard	30,062	Illinois	5368
3	Illinois	26,241	Florida	4221
4	Pennsylvania.	18,729	Cincinnati	4107
5	Cincinnati	17,771	Harvard	3552
6	Colorado	17,209	Loyola-L.A.	3423
7	USC	16,652	UC-Davis	3026
8	UC-Davis	16,432	USC	2698
9	Loyola-L.A.	16,417	NYU	2639
10	Chicago	15,922	Pennsylvania	2209
11	UCLA	14,709	Chapman	2151
12	Florida	13,785	Brooklyn	2086
13	NYU	12,801	Chicago	2032
14	Boston College	11,924	Minnesota	1967
15	Columbia	11,557	Boston College	1938
16	Chapman	11,290	Colorado	1867
17	Brooklyn	10,967	Pace	1866
18	Boston Univ.	10,856	UCLA	1834
19	Vanderbilt	8941	Vanderbilt	1793
20	Baltimore	8862	Case Western	1610
21	Pace	7962	Columbia	1609
22	Stanford	7775	Baltimore	1605
23	Notre Dame	7749	San Diego	1431
24	Florida State	7739	Boston Univ.	1405
25	Indiana	6998	Florida State	1353

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any full-time law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. Articles co-authored by members of a single faculty are counted only once towards that faculty’s tally.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

New 2012 U.S. News Tax Rankings

Here are the new 2012 U.S. News Tax Rankings, along with last year's rankings. The big changes from 2011 are (1) Florida moving ahead of Georgetown at #2, and (2) the number of schools without tax LL.M. programs moving up in the rankings (10) and the number of schools with tax LL.M. programs moving down (6):

2012 Rank	Tax Program	2011 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Florida	3
3	Georgetown	2
4	Northwestern	4
5	Miami	5
6	Harvard	8
7	UCLA	11
8	Virginia	10
9	Boston University	6
10	Columbia	14
10	Loyola-L.A.	9
10	Stanford	13
10	Texas	18
14	Michigan	16
14	USC	16
16	Boston College	18
16	Pennsylvania	n/r
16	San Diego	6
16	Villanova	21
20	U. Washington	n/r
21	Chapman	n/r
22	Chicago	21
22	UC-Hastings	18
n/r	Denver	12
n/r	SMU	14

Here are the rankings of the graduate tax programs, along with last year's rankings:

2012 Rank	Grad Tax Program	2011 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Florida	3
3	Georgetown	2
4	Northwestern	4
5	Miami	5
6	Boston University	6
7	Loyola-L.A.	8
8	San Diego	6
8	Villanova	11
10	U. Washington	n/r
11	Chapman	n/r
n/r	Denver	9
n/r	SMU	10

The U.S. News tax survey instrument states that it is intended "to identify the law schools having the top programs in tax law." The survey is sent "to a sample of law school faculty listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers 2009-2010 as currently teaching a course or seminar in tax law." Recipients are asked "to [i]dentify up to fifteen (15) schools that have the highest-quality tax law courses or programs. In making your choices consider all elements that contribute to a program's excellence, for example, the depth and breadth of the program, faculty research and publication record, etc."

As Donald Tobin (Ohio State) has noted, it is more than strange that NYU has finished ahead of Florida and Georgetown each year that U.S. News has conducted the survey.  Because the survey ranks the schools by how often they appear on the respondents' "Top 15" lists, this means that some folks list NYU, but not Florida and Georgetown, among the Top 15 tax programs.

For more on tax rankings, see our article, Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Where?, which compiles information about 13 highly ranked tax LLM programs: (1) NYU; (2) Florida; (3) Georgetown; (4) Northwestern; (5) Miami; (6) Boston University; (7) San Diego; (8) Loyola-L.A./LMU; (9) SMU; (10) Denver; (11) University of Washington; (12) Villanova; and (13) Chapman. The topics on which information is reported in the Article include: (1) tuition; (2) scholarships; (3) the full-time tax professors who teach in each program and the tax courses they teach; (4) the number of full-time and part-time students enrolled in each program; (5) general information about adjunct professors teaching in each program; (6) required courses; (7) elective courses, specialty certificates, and concentrations; (8) opportunities to develop tax practice skills by taking experiential learning courses and simulated practice courses; (9) extracurricular tax activities; (10) opportunities to graduate with honors or receive academic prizes; and (11) career planning and placement services offered to students in each program. The article also ranks the tax faculty at these thirteen law schools by citations (the Top 5 are NYU (1), Florida (2), Georgetown (3), Miami (4), and Northwestern (5)) and SSRN downloads (the Top 5 are Loyola-L.A. (1), NYU (2), Chapman (3), Florida (4), and San Diego (5)).

Other resources available on TaxProf Blog include:

• Links to All 32 Graduate Tax Programs
• Tax Faculty Rankings
• Graduate Tax Faculty Rankings
• Tax Professor Rankings
• Tax Faculty Metropolitan Area Rankings
• Links to Tax Colloquia Workshop Series (left column of the blog)

The 18 Most-Cited Tax Faculty

Brian Leiter (Chicago) has finalized his ranking of the Highest Impact Faculty in 13 Areas of Specialization, including tax, as measured by citations during the past five years (Jan. 1, 2005 - Jan. 15, 2010):

Rank	Tax Prof	Citations	Age
1	Michael Graetz (Yale)	370	66
2	Daniel Shaviro (NYU)	310	53
3	David Weisbach (Chicago)	300	47
4	Edward McCaffery (USC)	280	52
5	Reuven Avi-Yonah (Michigan)	260	53
	Edward Zelinsky (Cardozo)	260	60
7	Lawrence Zelenak (Duke)	240	55
8	Joseph Bankman (Stanford)	230	55
9	Victor Fleischer (Colorado)	200	39
	Leandra Lederman (Indiana)	200	44
	Nancy Staudt (Northwestern)	200	47
12	Marjorie Kornhauser (Arizona St.)	190	63
13	Calvin Johnson (Texas)	180	66
	Deborah Schenk (NYU)	180	63
15	David Schizer (Columbia)	170	42
16	Howard Abrams (Emory)	160	55
	Anne Alstott (Harvard)	160	47
	Thomas Griffith (USC)	160	61

Highly-cited scholars whose cites are not exclusively in this area:

• Louis Kaplow (Harvard) (age 54), 970 citations
• Kristin Hickman (Minnesota) (age 40), 230 citations
• Mark Gergen (UC-Berkeley) (age 54), 210 citations
• Kyle Logue (Michigan) (age 45), 180 citations

In our article, Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Where?, Jennifer M. Kowal (Loyola-L.A.), Katherine Pratt (Loyola-L.A.), Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) and I used a variation of Leiter's methodology in conducting a citation count study of the faculty in the thirteen graduate tax programs ranked at least once in the U.S. News tax rankings over the past four years (pp. 28-29):

Rank	Graduate Tax Program Faculty	Citations
1	NYU	1917
2	Florida	1181
3	Georgetown	861
4	Miami	799
5	Northwestern	667
6	Boston University	614
7	Loyola-L.A.	475
8	San Diego	377
9	Villanova	177
10	SMU	139
11	Chapman	112
12	U. Washington	75
13	Denver	42

Prior TaxProf Blog coverage:

• The 15 Most-Cited Tax Faculty (Apr. 5, 2010)
• More on Faculty Citation Rankings (Nov. 28, 2007)
• The Most-Cited Tax Faculty (Nov. 16, 2007)
• Ten Most-Cited Tax Faculty (Aug. 20, 2007)

In our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83, 120-22 (2006), Bernie Black (Northwestern) and I examined the Top 25 tax faculty as measured by SSRN downloads, a practice I update monthly on TaxProf Blog.

U.S. News Tax Rankings, 2008-2011

Following up on yesterday's post, New 2011 U.S. News Tax Rankings:  here are the overall and graduate tax rankings over the past four years:

Overall Tax Rankings (2008-2011):

Ave. Rank	Tax Program	2011 Rank	2010 Rank	2009 Rank	2008 Rank
1.00	NYU	1	1	1	1
2.25	Florida	3	2	2	2
2.50	Georgetown	2	2	3	3
4.00	Northwestern	4	4	4	4
5.75	Miami	5	6	6	6
6.00	Harvard	8	5	6	5
7.00	Boston University	6	6	8	8
7.00	UCLA	11	6	5	6
10.00	Virginia	10	11	9	10
10.75	San Diego	6	11	16	10
12.00	Michigan	16	9	10	13
12.25	Stanford	13	10	13	13
12.50	Texas	18	13	10	9
13.50	Loyola-L.A.	9	16	13	16
16.50	Columbia	13	13	19	21
17.75	Denver	12	19	19	21
18.00	SMU	14	19	22	17
	Yale		19	10	10
	U. Washington		19	15	18
	Chicago	21	15	17
	Penn		17	19	18
	USC	16		22	21
	Villanova	21		22	18
	Duke			18	15
	Boston College	18	23
	Chapman		17
	UC-Hastings	18
	G. Washington		23

Graduate Tax Rankings (2008-2011):

Ave. Rank	Grad Tax Program	2011 Rank	2010 Rank	2009 Rank	2008 Rank
1.00	NYU	1	1	1	1
2.25	Florida	3	2	2	2
2.50	Georgetown	2	2	3	3
4.00	Northwestern	4	4	4	4
5.00	Miami	5	5	5	5
5.75	Boston University	6	5	6	6
7.25	San Diego	6	7	9	7
7.75	Loyola-L.A.	8	8	7	8
10.00	SMU	10	10	11	9
10.25	Denver	9	10	10	12
	U. Washington		10	8	10
	Villanova	11		11	10
	Chapman		9

New 2011 U.S. News Tax Rankings

Here are the new 2011 U.S. News Tax Rankings, along with last year's rankings:

2011 Rank	Tax Program	2010 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Georgetown	2
3	Florida	3
4	Northwestern	4
5	Miami	6
6	Boston University	6
6	San Diego	11
8	Harvard	5
9	Loyola-L.A.	16
10	Virginia	11
11	UCLA	6
12	Denver	19
13	Stanford	10
14	Columbia	13
14	SMU	19
16	Michigan	9
16	USC	n/r
18	Boston College	23
18	UC-Hastings	n/r
18	Texas	13
21	Chicago	15
21	Villanova	n/r
n/r	Chapman	17
n/r	Pennsylvania	17
n/r	U. Washington	19
n/r	Yale	19
n/r	G. Washington	23

Here are the upward moves from last year in the overall tax rankings:

	Tax Program	2011 Rank
+7	Loyola-L.A.	9
+7	Denver	12
+5	San Diego	6
+5	SMU	14
+5	Boston College	18
+1	Miami	5
+1	Virginia	10

In addition, USC, UC-Hastings, and Villanova were unranked last year and rank #16, #18, and #21, respectively, this year.

Here are the downward moves from last year in the overall tax rankings:

	Law School	2011 Rank
-7	Michigan	16
-6	Chicago	21
-5	UCLA	11
-5	Texas	18
-3	Harvard	8
-3	Stanford	13
-1	Florida	3
-1	Columbia	14

In addition, Chapman, Pennsylvania, U. Washington, Yale, and George Washington ranked #17, #17, #19, #19, and #23, respectively, last year and are unranked this year.

Here are the rankings of the graduate tax programs, along with last year's rankings:

2011 Rank	Grad Tax Program	2010 Rank
1	NYU	1
2	Georgetown	2
3	Florida	2
4	Northwestern	4
5	Miami	5
6	Boston University	5
6	San Diego	7
8	Loyola-L.A.	8
9	Denver	10
10	SMU	10
11	Villanova	n/r
n/r	Chapman	9
n/r	U. Washington	10

This ranking does not include USC, which is launching a graduate tax program in Fall 2011.

Here are the upward moves from last year in the graduate tax rankings:

	Grad Tax Program	2011 Rank
+1	San Diego	6
+1	Denver	9

In addition, Villanova was unranked last year and ranks #11 this year.

Here are the downward moves from last year in the graduate tax rankings:

	Grad Tax Program	2011 Rank
-1	Florida	3
-1	Boston Univ.	6

In addition, Chapman and U. Washington ranked #9 and #10, respectively, last year and are unranked this year.

The U.S. News tax survey instrument states that it is intended "to identify the law schools having the top programs in tax law." The survey is sent "to a sample of law school faculty listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers 2007-2008 as currently teaching a course or seminar in tax law." Recipients are asked "to [i]dentify up to fifteen (15) schools that have the highest-quality tax law courses or programs. In making your choices consider all elements that contribute to a program's excellence, for example, the depth and breadth of the program, faculty research and publication record, etc."

As Donald Tobin (Ohio State) has noted, it is more than strange that NYU has finished ahead of Florida and Georgetown each year that U.S. News has conducted the survey.  Because the survey ranks the schools by how often they appear on the respondents' "Top 15" lists, this means that some folks list NYU, but not Florida and Georgetown, among the Top 15 tax programs.

Gender, Race, and Age in SSRN Download Rankings

In our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006), Bernie Black and I noted that one of the advantages of SSRN download counts over the other faculty rankings measures (citation counts, publication counts, and reputation surveys) is that SSRN downloads favor younger scholars at improving law schools while the other measures favor more established scholars and schools.  We also noted that women and minorities are under-represented in SSRN download counts as they are in citation counts, publication counts, and reputation surveys, but speculated that the representation of women and minorities would improve in the future as they posted more papers on SSRN, particularly in the recent downloads measure.  We closed the article with case studies of the SSRN download rankings in our respective fields -- corporate and tax law (pp. 120-22).  The SSRN download data were from August 2005.  The chart below compares that data with the most recent tax download data (September 2009) on gender, race, and age:

	Top 25 All-Time Downloads		Top 25 Recent Downloads
	2005	2009	2005	2009
% Women	16%	20%	20%	39%
% Men	84%	80%	80%	61%
% Minority	8%	4%	0%	0%
% White	92%	96%	100%	100%
Mean Age	47.0	47.6	45.4	46.3
Median Age	47.0	48.0	44.5	47.0

Earlier this year, I asked Why Do Female Tax Profs Do Better in the SSRN Rankings Than Their Nontax Counterparts?.  The representation of women in the Top 25 has increased from 2005 to 2009 in both all-time (4 percentage points) and recent (19) downloads.  However, the representation of minorities has decreased in all-time downloads (4) downloads and has stayed at 0 in recent downloads (based on self reporting in the AALS listing of minority law teachers).

On the age front, Tax Profs in the Top 25 of the SSRN download rankings in both 2005 (all time: 47.0 mean, 47.0 median; recent: 45.4 mean, 44.5 median) and 2009 (all time: 47.6 mean, 48.0 median; recent: 46.3 mean, 47.0 median) are much younger than Tax Profs (55 mean, 54 median) and law professors (53 mean, 52 median) generally.  Eric A. Lustig, Who We Are: An Empirical Study of the Tax Law Professoriate, 1 Pitt. Tax Rev. 85 (2003) (2001 AALS data).  However, the mean and median ages have increased from 2005 to 2009 in both download categories -- all-time (0.6 mean, 1.0 median) and recent (0.9 mean, 2.5 median) downloads.

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his ranking of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 8/19/09):

		All-Time Downloads		Recent Downloads
1	Michigan	26,128	Michigan	6777
2	Harvard	23,955	Illinois	4366
3	Illinois	15,724	UC-Davis	3976
4	Pennsylvania	14,560	Harvard	3285
5	Colorado	13,418	Chicago	2708
6	Chicago	11,882	Loyola-L.A.	2669
7	USC	10,970	Pennsylvania	2381
8	Loyola-L.A.	10,839	Colorado	2377
9	UCLA	10,817	Washburn	2322
10	UC-Davis	9474	Baltimore	2266
11	Columbia	8653	Florida State	2126
12	Boston University	8516	UCLA	1997
13	Florida State	8501	USC	1939
14	Cincinnati	7711	Connecticut	1800
15	Chapman	6341	San Diego	1792
16	Stanford	6247	Chapman	1746
17	NYU	6000	Florida	1644
18	Florida	5518	Pace	1637
19	Washburn	5392	Columbia	1468
20	Baltimore	5164	Boston University	1467
21	Indiana-Bloomington	5012	Case Western	1372
22	Boston College	4638	Notre Dame	1346
23	Notre Dame	4608	Northwestern	1297
24	UC-Berkeley	4463	Texas Tech	1249
25	George Mason	4455	UC-Berkeley	1190

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any full-time law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. Articles co-authored by members of a single faculty are counted only once towards that faculty’s tally.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

New 2010 U.S. News Tax Rankings

The new 2010 U.S. News Law School Tax Rankings were released today:

• 1. NYU (#1 last year)
• 2. Florida (#2)
• 2. Georgetown (#3)
• 4. Northwestern (#4)
• 5. Harvard (#6)
• 6. Boston University (#8)
• 6. Miami (#6)
• 6. UCLA (#5)
• 9. Michigan (#10)
• 10. Stanford (#13)
• 11. San Diego (#16)
• 11. Virginia (#9)
• 13. Columbia (#19)
• 13. Texas (#10)
• 15. Chicago (#17)
• 16. Loyola-L.A. (#13)
• 17. Chapman (unranked)
• 17. Penn (#19)
• 19. Denver (#19)
• 19. SMU (#22)
• 19. U. Washington (#15)
• 19. Yale (#10)
• 23. Boston College (unranked)
• 23. George Washington (unranked)

The upward moves from last year in the overall tax rankings are:

• +6 Columbia (#13)
• +5 San Diego (#11)
• +3 Stanford (#10)
• +3 SMU (#19)
• +2 Boston University (#6)
• +2 Chicago (#15)
• +2 Penn (#17)
• +1 Georgetown (#2)
• +1 Harvard (#5)
• +1 Michigan (#9)
• Chapman, Boston College, and George Washington were unranked last year and rank #17, #23, and #23, respectively, this year

The downward moves from last year in the overall tax rankings are:

• -9 Yale (#19)
• -4 U. Washington (#19)
• -3 Texas (#13)
• -3 Loyola-L.A. (#16)
• -2 Virginia (#11)
• -1 UCLA (#6)
• Duke, USC, and Villanova ranked #18, #22, and #22, respectively, last year and are unranked this year

Here are the rankings of the graduate tax programs:

• 1. NYU (#1 last year)
• 2. Florida (#2)
• 2. Georgetown (#3)
• 4. Northwestern (#4)
• 5. Boston University (#6)
• 5. Miami (#5)
• 7. San Diego (#9)
• 8. Loyola-L.A. (#7)
• 9. Chapman (unranked)
• 10. Denver (#10)
• 10. SMU (#11)
• 10. U. Washington (#8)

The upward moves from last year in the graduate tax program rankings are:

• +2 San Diego (#7)
• +1 Georgetown (#2)
• +1 Boston University (#5)
• +1 SMU (#10)
• Chapman was unranked last year and ranks #9 this year

The downward moves from last year in the graduate tax program rankings are:

• - 2 U. Washington (#10)
• - 1 Loyola-L.A. (#8)
• Villanova was ranked #11 last year and is unranked this year

For the 2009 U.S. News Tax Rankings, see here.

Early Release of 2010 U.S. News Tax Rankings

Although the 2010 U.S. News Law School Tax Rankings will not be released until Thursday, April 23, the Top 10 list appearing in the magazine has been published on the Internet.  Perhaps the biggest development is Georgetown moving up to #2 (tied with Florida): 

• 1.  NYU (#1 last year)
• 2.  Florida (#2)
• 2.  Georgetown (#3)
• 4.  Northwestern (#4)
• 5.  Harvard (#6)
• 6.  Boston University (#8)
• 6.  UCLA (#5)
• 6.  Miami (#6)
• 9.  Michigan (#10)
• 10. Stanford (#13)

I will publish the complete Top 25 Tax Rankings when they become available on Thursday (if not earlier).  For the 2009 tax rankings, see here.

Update:  For the release of the full 2010 U.S. News Tax Rankings of the Top 24 schools, see here.

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 9/12/08) [click on chart to enlarge]:

   

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. Articles co-authored by members of a single faculty are counted only once towards that faculty’s tally.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 12/6/07) [click on chart to enlarge]:

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 8/1/07):

   

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 6/1/07):

 

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. (Lateral transfers due to take effect July 2007 are not yet incorporated.) Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. This month’s tally for Michigan is boosted by the addition of Jim Hines.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 5/1/07):

 

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. (Lateral transfers due to take effect July 2007 are not yet incorporated.) Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. This month’s tally for Michigan is boosted by the addition of Jim Hines.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

Overall Law Faculty Rankings v. Tax Faculty Rankings

Brian Leiter (Texas) has posted The Top 15 Most Downloaded Law Faculties, 2006 on our Leiter's Law School Rankings site.  The following chart compares how the overall faculty rankings compare to the tax faculty rankings compiled by Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.):

[Click on chart to enlarge.]  Note that 7 of the schools comprising the Top 15 Faculties also are among the Top 15 Tax Faculties.

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 3/1/07):   

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the 2005-2006 AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of 2006-2007 new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. This month’s rankings include several requested additions to the NYU tally, among others.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 2/1/07): 

   

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the 2005-2006 AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of 2006-2007 new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. This month’s rankings include several requested additions to the NYU tally, among others.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 1/1/07):      

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the 2005-2006 AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of 2006-2007 new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. This month’s rankings include several requested additions to the NYU tally, among others.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 12/1/06): 

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the 2005-2006 AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of 2006-2007 new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. This month’s rankings include several requested additions to the NYU tally, among others.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 11/1/06):

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the 2005-2006 AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of 2006-2007 new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied. This month’s rankings include several requested additions to the NYU tally, among others.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

Updated SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 10/1/06):   

For purpose of Ted’s analysis, a tax professor is initially defined as any law professor at a U.S. law school (1) self-identifying with one of the tax categories in the 2005-2006 AALS faculty listing, (2) who has posted at least one tax or tax-related article in abstract or full text on SSRN. Paul Caron’s listing of 2006-2007 new hires and lateral transfers is also reflected. Further corrections are also made as requested. As is true of Paul Caron’s ranking of individual tax professors, downloads of all SSRN postings of any tax professor, so defined, are then tallied.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006).

Updated SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 9/1/06):   

I’m still working the bugs out of the system. I now have Yariv Brauner back at Florida, not Arizona State. In addition, I’ve added Donald Weidner to Florida State’s tally. These faculty changes account for all of the changes in “all-time downloads.” Otherwise, the “all-time download” rankings are unchanged from last month. “Recent downloads,” of course, are much more of a “What have you done for me lately?” phenomenon.

For more details about Ted's study, see below the fold:

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More on Tax Faculty Rankings

Jim Maule responds to our publication of Ted Seto's second monthly tax faculty rankings (here and here), questioning the usefulness of SSRN downloads as a rankings measure and proposing an alternative ranking based on the number of BNA tax portfolios published by a school's tax faculty.  Here are the top schools under Jim's measure:

• 1.  Villanova
• 2.  Iowa State
• 3.  SMU
•      Suffolk
• 5.  Emory
•     Georgia
•     Houston
•     Michigan
•     Washington & Lee

Although Jim claims that this ranking is "no more or less meaningful than any other tax faculty ranking," I suspect most people would find SSRN's tax faculty ranking more persuasive:

• 1.  Harvard
• 2.  UCLA
• 3.  Penn
• 4.  USC
• 5.  Michigan
• 6.  Columbia

Indeed, SSRN's ranking of law faculties as a whole also seems to identify the right top schools:

• 1.  Chicago
• 2.  Harvard
• 3.  Columbia
• 4.  Stanford
• 5.  Texas
• 6.  UCLA
• 7.  Yale
• 8.  Georgetown

Jim is certainly right that SSRN is an incomplete measure, as it includes only a subset of faculty scholarship.  But as I argue in a forthcoming essay in a Yale Law Journal Pocket Part symposium on The Future of Legal Scholarship, the enormous data available on SSRN (3,500 law faculty have posted 11,500 papers on SSRN, which have been downloaded 2.4 million times) provide important insights into the market for legal scholarship.

The answer to SSRN's shortcomings is not to go in the other direction and focus on the offerings of a single publisher.  In our article, What Law Schools Can Learn from Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, 82 Tex. L. Rev. 1483, 1533-37 (2004), Rafael Gely and I propose comprehensive and qualitative measurements of faculty scholarly performance:

Given the increasing market demand for more detailed and refined measurements of performance, future studies should provide a comprehensive list of all faculty publications, with the weighting disclosed by the authors and thus capable of further refinement by others. Indeed, we envision a custom-ranking process that allows users to assign their own rankings to the comprehensive data, as is developing now with law school rankings....

The next step in the development of citation count methodologies should extend measurements to include citations to faculty work in books and other forms of scholarship, as well as in judicial opinions, executive branch determinations, and congressional sources....[M]easurements of scholarly impact by citation counts to date consistently have foreshorn any qualitative measures and instead have embraced a strictly numerical approach. But assuming a reliable measure of law review quality can be developed, it may be proper to “count” an article in the #1-ranked journal more than an article of equivalent length in the #180-ranked journal. It also may be appropriate for an extensive discussion of a faculty member’s work in the text of an article to “count” more than a single mention in a string cite in a footnote of an article.

In addition to productivity and citation counts, a more rigorous and systematic use of peer evaluation could provide an alternative measure of individual faculty productivity. The Internet provides a venue for faculty to evaluate each other’s work, not unlike the “book reviews” common on Internet bookstores such as Amazon.com.

I subscribe to Philip Postlewaite's view in Life After Tenure: Where Have All the Articles Gone?, 48 J. Legal Educ. 558, 567 (1998):

[T]he consummate legal academic publishes for the academy (academic articles and university press books), for the profession (professional articles and treatises), and for students (casebooks and student guides). Each constituency is worth addressing, and the vehicles appropriate to the different constituencies are equally legitimate. No constituency and no vehicle of expression should be preferable to the others. All have value.

Updated SSRN Tax Faculty Rankings

Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has updated his monthly rankings of the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 8/15/06): 

 

Due to a misallocation of faculty members, Florida was overcounted last month and Illinois and Arizona State were undercounted. In this month’s rankings, these errors have been corrected. As a result, Florida has dropped and Illinois and Arizona State have risen in the rankings.

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006). For more details about Ted's study, see below the fold:

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Seto on The Top 25 Tax Faculties

As regular readers of this blog know, I prepare a weekly ranking of the Top 5 New Tax Papers, as well as a monthly ranking of the Top 25 Tax Professors, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads.  Theodore P. Seto (Loyola-L.A.) has gone a step further and prepared a study for publication here, SSRN Tax Faculty Downloads by Law School and City.  I will share the results of this study over the next three days.

In today's installment, Ted ranks the Top 25 U.S. Law School Tax Faculties, as measured by the number of SSRN downloads (through 7/1/06):

Note: Because of his recent move, Victor Fleischer's downloads are credited to Colorado rather than to UCLA.  Ted's conclusion:

SSRN downloads are, of course, only one measure of scholarly productivity and impact, and scholarship is certainly not the only relevant measure of the quality of a law faculty. With these qualifications, however, it’s pretty clear who comes out on top: UCLA’s tax faculty rocks. (If Louis Kaplow’s non-tax works are excluded, UCLA heads both lists.)

Ted Seto's 3-Part Study of Tax Faculties:

• Today:  The Top 25 Tax Faculties
• Thursday:  The Top Graduate Tax Faculties
• Friday:  The Top 10 Tax Faculties By Metropolitan Region

For more on the use of SSRN downloads in law school rankings, see Bernard S. Black & Paul L. Caron, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006). For more details about Ted's study, see below the fold:

Continue reading