U.S. News Rankings

The 2008 U.S. News rankings of law schools leaked, today, as a number of websites reported. See, for example, Abovethelaw.com [ed.: link updated to an archived link because the original was broken]. One of the major points people are talking about is that Penn and Chicago, still tied, dropped to seventh, while the University of California at Berkeley (formerly Boalt Hall) jumped to sixth. Meanwhile, Michigan and Virginia continued their unjustified slides, while Northwestern climbed into a tie with those schools for ninth.

Now, the U.S. News rankings have been subjected to a lot of criticism elsewhere, but the results this year make even less sense than usual. For deconstructions of the rankings (in general and this year), see Brian Leiter’s Open Letter to Other Law Bloggers [ed.: link updated to an archived link because the original was broken], Concurring Opinions, or Jim Lindgren’s post on the Volokh Conspiracy.

I’m not a fan of the U.S. News rankings, but it seemed appropriate to at least mention them on here.