Tuesday, November 29, 2022

In a rush to virtue signal, law schools say the darndest things!

Law schools are falling all over themselves to copy Yale by withdrawing from the US News law school rankings.  As I explained earlier, they are not actually “withdrawing”; rather, they are just not going to submit data anymore.  And of course, they will still get ranked.  (If refusing to submit data meant being removed from the premier list of law schools, they would all keep submitting data.)  This move of not submitting data has been done before—most notably, by my alma mater, Marquette Law, in the 1990s. (See MU L. Rev. p. 310.)  So this is a well-beaten path that leads nowhere new.

In any case, law schools are just following their strong urge to copy Yale.  (Yale and Harvard grads run, and teach at, virtually every law school in the country.)  But rather than admitting this, the law schools are instead virtue signaling.  They are rushing to get their statements out, proclaiming to the world how morally awesome they are!  But in some cases, these schools might be rushing just a little too fast.

Take UC-Irvine’s Austen Parish, who recently issued this statement, claiming the moral high ground over the dastardly US News: “Collectively we have determined that continuing to participate in the U.S. News rankings is not consistent with our founding ideals.”

The problem is that Mr. Parish just joined the law school this year (2022), so he might not be familiar with his school’s actual "founding ideals."  The entire purpose of founding the school was to create an elite, top-20 US News law school right off the bat.  And the school went on a mad spending spree to accomplish that lofty goal.  As one of the scam blogs wrote in 2015, the year UC Irvine first became eligible for US News rankings, “the entire venture [UC Irvine’s law school] seemed to have the express purpose of gaming the U.S. News methodology and jump-starting a ‘top’ law school.”

But when Irvine debuted in the rankings, it came in at #30, not #20, among the then 200-or-so law schools.  According to the school's newspaper“Despite this success [at #30], however, the ranking fell short of Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s publicly announced goal of having the school break into the US News ranking as a top-20 school.”  But the Dean was undeterred: 

Although the No. 30 ranking is considered by some to be a lofty accomplishment, others were disappointed, especially because a large number of donations were made to UCI Law. Now, concerns have arisen surrounding the ability of the school to recruit high-achieving students.

Despite these setbacks, [then Dean] Chemerinsky believes the young law school is on its way to becoming a top-20 school. He said that no other school as young as UCI Law has been in the top 50 or top 75. “We will be constantly working on moving up,” he said.

And this was from 2015—a mere seven years ago.  While the US News no doubt tweaks its methodology occasionally in response to “some schools that are clearly gaming the U.S. News rankings,” at its core it has remained unchanged.  So UC Irvine’s proclamation that US News is not consistent with its values—and, more specifically, its “founding” values—is tough to swallow. 

But let’s face it, despite the disappointment of those who think there is a serious difference between a USN #20 school and a USN #30 school, Dean Chemerinsky did a fantastic job taking a law school from nothing to #30 in its rankings debut.  In fact, he did so well that, when UC Berkeley slipped from #8 in the rankings to #12—an insignificant and probably random fluctuation—Berkeley hired Chemerinsky as its Dean to bring it back to top-10 US News territory!  And hopefully top 5! 

More specifically, noting its school’s fall from “from 8th to 12th in U.S. News & World Report’s ‘Best Law School’ rankings, creating a climate of uncertainty,” combined with Chemerinsky’s impressive accomplishment of getting UC Irvine to #30 right out of the gates, Berkeley knew it had to gobble him up.

But what does UC Berkeley think about the US News now, a mere five years after it hired Chemerinsky to get it “in or near the top five of all law schools”?  Strangely, it too decided to stop submitting data to the US News.  Now, no less than Chemerinsky himself has suddenly claimed to realize that “the US News rankings,” are “profoundly inconsistent with our values and public mission.”   

What?!  Granted, Chemerinsky has spewed some nonsense before.  But other than Yale withdrawing from the rankings, what could possibly have changed in the five years since he was hired and stated his goal of getting Berkeley a top 5 USN ranking?  Likely answer: nothing.  Berkeley still wants to be USN top 5, of course, but it also wants to withhold its data so it can claim the moral high ground with its law school superior, Yale.  Law schools are among the most elitist and conformist institutions in America, if you, dear reader, haven't noticed.

Funny how quickly schools forget their very recent history, and how quick they are to jump on Yale’s bandwagon, virtue signaling all the way to the new law school Holy Land.

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