OJ Ranked 19th in Visitors Among Law Professor Blogs

TaxProfBlog has posted a chart with the visitor and page view ranks for law professor blogs for the last quarter.  Our Very Own Opinio Juris is ranked number 19th in visitors.  Of course, we like to think that it is the quality, rather than the quantity, of our visitors that matters.  And we do thank you for coming by.

However, I can’t resist commenting that with the rise of empirical studies among legal scholars, and among international legal studies, we have developed a passion – mania, even? – for counting things.  

It is not historically unprecedented; in the rise of literacy and educated thought in 18th century Britain, a certain mania for counting all sorts of things developed – somewhat in a vacuum, as the tools of statistical analysis had not yet been developed.  This was the period, for example, when amateurs began counting, among other things, deaths and death rates in London and then beyond, and the result was eventually the profession of actuary.  

But what I cannot help noticing is that when we law professors count things, the things we apparently most love to count are matters of importance to being a law professor.  Ever more refined ways of measuring scholarly productivity, for example – isn’t the fastest way to the top of the SSRN rankings (besides an article entitled F***) an article talking about UN News rankings, measuring scholarly citations, etc., etc.?  I admit to being as fascinated by it as the next person – er, law professor – even though in many cases I can’t think for the life of me what difference it ought to make.