Comments on: Law School Ranking: Measurement vs. Characterization

By: frank cross

frank cross — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:44:57 +0000

I find lawyers’ reaction to numbers and rankings very odd. These evaluations are made all the time, which is the better law school, who’s the best scholar, etc. The rankings simply provide information on this question. They aren’t perfect but your subjective opinion on the issue sure as heck isn’t perfect either.

There’s a strange fear of numbers here. There are various reasons for the fear of numbers, I think. One common, and distressing, reason is that they are less manipulable to reach the result the person wants, than is subjectivity. But the fear I see mostly is the thought that the numbers are somehow the “answer.” That they magically end the discussion. That’s wrong. They simply inform the discussion. May they be misused? Sure, but that is true of everything and hence is a criticism of everything (and hence, of nothing).

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:43:47 +0000

The sorts of criticisms noted in the quoted section can be taken in two ways- one reasonable and the other stupid. The reasonable way is as either noting things that might be improved on in the future or else as noting things that should lead smart consumers of the rankings to ask more questions or otherwise serve as caveats on using the rankings. I’m sure that Leiter has no objections to such remarks. The stupid way to mean them would be to believe that there could be a perfect ranking system, one that combines all desirable elements and has no undesirable ones. It’s hard to tell here which way the remarks are meant so I’ll assume it’s the good way. Many critics of rankings, however, seem pretty clearly to mean the stupid thing. (Leiter, for example, has given some good reasons for focusing on Canadian journals. They might not be fully persuasive in the end, but it wasn’t an arbitrary choice, and including American journals would have some clear draw-backs, too.)

Finally, the idea that rankings of schools in general is bad seems silly to me. Unless one thinks there is no significant difference between the schools (an unlikely proposition) then rankings can be useful to students. They are not perfect but of course anyone who uses them in a stupid way probably ought not go to law school, even more so than someone who would not read a 300page narrative account.

By: Michael Lee

Michael Lee — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 06:25:12 +0000

Just as the law cannot command a useless act, so should we not undertake or acknowledge a useless act, i.e., to pay attention to wholly subjective rankings.