15 Apr Changes in the U.S. News International Law Rankings?
Today, U.S. News & World Report (USN&WR) officially released its 2011 rankings of American law schools. This, in turn, led the legal blogosphere into its annual love-hate dance with the “overall” rankings–pouring over every move up or down the ladder, while simultaneously denouncing the ranking’s methodology and utility. Lest our readers feel left out, I thought I’d flag the “new” International Law rankings that accompany the overall tiering. NYU leads the pack, which actually seems quite sensible. Although NYU lost a truly tremendous figure in Thomas Franck last year, it hired José Alvarez and Ryan Goodman to join the likes of Philip Alston, David Golove, Robert Howse, Benedict Kingsbury, Mattias Kumm, Andy Lowenfeld, Linda Silberman, and Joseph Weiler (and that’s only a partial listing of NYU’s international law faculty, not to mention their global visitors, clinicians, and institute folks who also spend time working on international legal issues there).
I’ll leave to others to decide what to make of the remainder of the top 10 that’s available on the USN&WR website. What I wanted to call attention to was the “premium” access list (i.e., the list for paying customers). It details a fuller ranking of U.S. international law programs (here, for example, is where you’ll find my institution–Temple–coming in at No. 12, tied with Berkeley). There’s something different, however, about the premium list this year. In the past, USN&WR used it to list the “top 25” international law programs. This year, the list stops at 15 (actually 17 given tie scores). What gives? Was this a calculated effort by USN&WR to change the scope and value of these specialty rankings? Was it the result of some problems with the survey data (I believe these rankings are done almost entirely based on peer evaluations) that precluded offering a longer list? Or, was it a result of some other methodological shift? I couldn’t find anything on the USN&WR site that explained the change. As a result, I’d welcome thoughts from readers on the topic. In doing so, I’ll also open up the thread to more general comments about the accuracy, utility, and value (or lack of any of the foregoing) in ranking international law programs at U.S. law schools.
Does anyone else perceive a greater tendency over the years to ranks schools evenly? For instance, there are several schools “tied” at 42 and 72. I do not pay enough attention to the methodology, perhaps, to understand how this has happened.
Whatever exactly one makes of the list, it does seem this year to represent something more than just reflexively reproducing the schools that are the top of the general list. NYU’s placement at number 1 is partly an indication of that. It’s also telling just how hard it is for schools not along the Eastern seaboard, or in DC or NY, to be in the top ten. The move away from 25 – who can possibly rank 25 schools in a serial way in international law? I couldn’t – seems like a good idea to me, and I would prefer to see something more like a top 10, and then another 10 or so schools listed as “ranking” or something, but not differentiated.
Discussing these rankings always makes me feel a little, well, unclean, but a few points. 1. Ken, I have never seen one of these ballots, so you may have superior information — but from what USNWR says it sounds like the system differs from that you describe, and isn’t as limited as you posit. The website says that specialists in the field (as measured by listing in the AALS directory) “nominated up to 15 schools in each field” and that “programs that received the most top 15 nominations appear in descending order.” It sounds like it’s kind of a block voting concept, with no attempt to elicit any voter’s relative ranking as in a Condorcet; ranking is just revealed by the sum of undifferentiated top 15 votes. Assuming this is right, there is no risk of overloading voters with excessive ranking exercises. Moreover, nothing in a decision to expand to 15 or 25 results means that voters have to see an equivalent number of choices; each could name their favorite 10, and the resulting field would probably be more than 10. 2. Duncan, you ask why (notwithstanding the above) the number of ranked institutions has dropped. I have a conjecture:… Read more »
Ed – it’s been a number of years since I’ve seen a ballot, but I think you’re probably right about it being a block voting system.
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