Volume 88.7 (November 2021) 1595–1787
Essays
The Most-Cited Legal Scholars Revisited
Fred R. Shapiro - Associate Library Director for Collections and Access, Yale Law School; Editor, Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations; Editor, New Yale Book of Quotations.
This Essay presents a list of the fifty most-cited legal scholars of all time, intending to spotlight individuals who have had a very notable impact on legal thought and institutions. Because citation counting favors scholars who have had long careers, I supplement the main listing with a ranking of the most-cited younger legal scholars. In addition, I include five specialized lists: most-cited international law scholars, most-cited corporate law scholars, most-cited scholars of critical race theory and feminist jurisprudence, most-cited public law scholars, and most-cited scholars of law and social science. (For those readers who cannot wait to see the actual lists, Tables 1–7 are on pages 8–11.) The utility of citation totals as indicators of scholarly quality or even of scholarly influence is controversial, but they have been shown to correlate positively with informed subjective assessments. The danger in relying on such counts is that, because they are so convenient, they will be disproportionately relied upon relative to their actual probative value. There are a number of significant biases in citation statistics, and there are a variety of pitfalls that should be avoided in attempting to compile meaningful citation data. I will describe these biases and pitfalls when I explain the derivation and methodology of my study. It is my hope that I have produced tabulations that, although they clearly have imperfections, can serve as examples of careful analysis. Such examples are sorely needed after flawed proposed “scholarly impact rankings” by the U.S. News and World Report threatened to have a harmful effect on legal education.
Lessons to be Learned from Peter Yu
John T. Cross - Grosscurth Professor of Law, University of Louisville School of Law.
Guido Calabresi’s “Other Justice Reasons”
Adam Davidson - Harry A. Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago Law School
Reading Erwin Chemerinsky
Michele Goodwin - Michele Goodwin is a Chancellor’s Professor of Law & Founding Director, Center for Biotechnology & Global Health Policy, at the University of California, Irvine.
The Problem of Gender Inequity: The Legacy of Deborah Rhode
Joanna L. Grossman - Ellen K. Solender Endowed Chair in Women and the Law and Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law.
A Cross-Cutting Public Law Scholar for the Ages
Nicole Huberfeld - Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law, Boston University School of Public Health, and Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law.
As Brown Has Waned
Aziz Z. Huq - Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School.
What is Privacy? That’s the Wrong Question
Woodrow Hartzog- Professor of Law and Computer Science, Northeastern University.
Lucian Bebchuk and the Study of Corporate Governance
Kobi Kastiel - Associate Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University; Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School.
A Pioneer of the Law & Society Movement: One Eyewitness’s Reflections
Jayanth K. Krishnan- Milt & Judi Stewart Professor of Law and Director of the Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession, Indiana University Bloomington Maurer School of Law.
The Scholar as Coauthor
Jonathan S. Masur- John P. Wilson Professor of Law and David & Celia Hilliard Research Scholar, University of Chicago Law School.
Tribe’s Trajectory & LGBTQ Rights
Joshua Matz - Joshua Matz is a partner at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center.
Jeffrey Rachlinski: Man, Myth, Legend
Gregory S. Parks - Associate Dean of Strategic Initiatives & Professor of Law at Wake Forest University School of Law.
Applying Harold Koh’s Transnational Legal Model to Current Human Rights Challenges
Michael Posner - Jerome Kohlberg Professor of Ethics and Finance and Director of the Center for Business and Human Rights, NYU Stern School of Business.
On Prisoners, Politics, and the Administration of Criminal Justice: Professor Rachel Barkow
Sonja Starr - Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Criminology, The University of Chicago Law School.