I mention, only to help those trying to determine whether any biases underlie my comments about law schools, that I have a J.D. from Harvard Law School. The University of Chicago Law School offered me a very nice scholarship, but I foolishly declined it.
I owe tremendous debts to Yale Law School’s former Law Librarian and Professor of Law Teresa Miguel-Stearns and the Interim Law Library Director, Jason Eiseman, for their extraordinary encouragement and support. In preparing this study, I received excellent advice especially from Akhil Reed Amar and also from Anne Alstott, Lauren Edelman, Harold Hongju Koh, Jonathan Macey, Nicholas Parrillo, Judith Resnik, and Tom Tyler. None of them should be held responsible for any errors or misjudgments that I have made. I was extremely fortunate to have the benefit of the intelligence and productivity of an outstanding research assistant, Sophie Laing.
Citation analysis has been around for a long time in law. Indexes of cases cited by the cases printed in reporter volumes may be found as far back as 1743, when an English reporter, Raymond’s Reports, contained “A Table of the Names of the Cases” in which “The cases printed in Italic are cited cases.”
