Legal Commentary

It's time for rotations! I'm very grateful to all of our January guest bloggers and I'm very excited to welcome (back) a great new crew of folks for February. Joining us for the first time, we have Robin Effron (Brooklyn Law); Darren Rosenblum (Pace); Aaron Bruhl (Houston); Andrew Coan (Wisconsin/Michigan); and Ian Bartrum (Drake). Returning for a reprise visit, I'm thrilled to welcome back some close friends of Prawfs: Brian Galle (FSU en route to BC via GW); Jack Chin (Arizona), and Lesley Wexler (FSU). You can learn more about these folks on the sidebar.

On other issues:

I was wondering what others thought of POTUS chewing out Scotus at SOTU. Adam Liptak's coverage in the NYT made me think that it was probably a bone-headed move, regardless of whatever short-term political gains Obama made (and regardless of the not insubstantial merits of the critique). After all, why would a sitting SCOTUS justice ever agree to come to the SOTU spectacle again if there's a risk of being dominated like that especially without a right of reply of any sort? And I bet even some of the Fab 4 on the left felt a bit sorry for their colleagues. My guess is that Souter, had he been there, would have thought: no wonder I spend my summers in a NH cabin.

Last: Michael Yelnosky at Roger Williams has updated his very useful (though not without problems) survey of faculty productivity as measured by publications in leading journals. You can find the rankings of the schools surveyed there, along with notes on methodology, etc. Btw, if your school is in the top 50 and you've done a similar self-study, I know some people who are interested in gathering that data. Leiter did a similar sort of survey ten years ago, but has not updated it since, unfortunately.

In any event, and delightfully, FSU comes in #2, just a mite behind San Diego. Those two faculty emerge a good bit ahead of all other schools outside the top 50 on USNWR, and indeed, a substantial amount ahead of a # of solid very good schools in the top 50 that were surveyed, including BU, BC, and UConn. Go Noles.