SSRN has updated its monthly rankings of 662 American and international law school faculties and 3,000 law professors by (among other things) the number of paper downloads from the SSRN data base. Here is the new list (through March 28, 2011) of the Top 25 U.S. Tax Professors in two of the SSRN categories: all-time downloads and recent downloads (within the past 12 months):
|
|
|
All-Time Downloads
|
|
Recent Downloads
|
|
1
|
Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)
|
19,677
|
Paul Caron (Cincinnati)
|
6436
|
|
2
|
Louis Kaplow (Harvard)
|
16,031
|
Reuven Avi-Yonah (Mich.)
|
5105
|
|
3
|
Paul Caron (Cincinnati)
|
15,837
|
Katie Pratt (Loyola-LA) |
4804
|
|
4
|
Vic Fleischer (Colorado)
|
15,035
|
Jen Kowal (Loyola-LA)
|
4213
|
|
5
|
James Hines (Michigan)
|
13,991
|
Francine Lipman (Chapman)
|
3059
|
|
6
|
Dennis Ventry (UC-Davis)
|
11,620
|
Carter Bishop (Suffolk)
|
2885
|
|
7
|
David Walker (Boston Univ.)
|
10,375
|
Herwig Schlunk (Vand.)
|
2488
|
|
8
|
Chris Sanchirico (Penn)
|
10,295
|
Ted Seto (Loyola-LA)
|
2292
|
|
9
|
David Weisbach (Chicago)
|
9786
|
Dennis Ventry (UC-Davis)
|
2248
|
|
10
|
Ted Seto (Loyola-LA)
|
9726
|
Steven Willis (Florida)
|
2154
|
|
11
|
Richard Kaplan (Illinois)
|
9683
|
Amy Monahan (Minnesota)
|
2062
|
|
12
|
Ed McCaffery (USC)
|
9217
|
Dan Shaviro (NYU)
|
1784
|
|
13
|
Francine Lipman (Chapman)
|
9214
|
Vic Fleischer (Colorado)
|
1723
|
|
14
|
Robert Sitkoff (Harvard)
|
8800
|
Richard Kaplan (Illinois)
|
1677
|
|
15
|
Herwig Schluk (Vanderbilt)
|
8368
|
Bridget Crawford (Pace)
|
1650
|
|
16
|
Carter Bishop (Suffolk)
|
8295
|
James Hines (Michigan)
|
1616
|
|
17
|
Steven Bank (UCLA)
|
8009
|
Erik Jensen (Case Western)
|
1558
|
|
18
|
Katie Pratt (Loyola-LA)
|
7628
|
Martin McMahon (Florida)
|
1509
|
|
19
|
Brad Borden (Brooklyn)
|
7415
|
Allison Christians (Wisc.)
|
1489
|
|
20
|
Daniel Shaviro (NYU)
|
7215
|
David Walker (Boston Univ.)
|
1478
|
|
21
|
Wendy Gerzog (Baltimore)
|
6945
|
John Miller (Idaho)
|
1376
|
|
22
|
Bridget Crawford (Pace)
|
6937
|
Ellen Aprill (Loyola-LA) |
1353
|
|
23
|
Jen Kowall (Loyola-LA)
|
6822
|
Joshua Blank (NYU)
|
1307
|
|
24
|
Michael Knoll (Penn)
|
6694
|
Louis Kaplow (Harvard)
|
1286
|
|
25
|
David Schizer (Columbia)
|
6508
|
Steven Bank (UCLA)
|
1194
|
Note that this ranking includes full-time tax professors with at least one tax paper on SSRN, and all papers (including non-tax papers) by these tax professors are included in the SSRN data:
The other SSRN ranking categories are:
These rankings, of course, are imperfect measures of faculty scholarly performance — as are the existing ranking methodologies of reputation surveys, productivity counts, and citation counts. Our modest claim in our article, Ranking Law Schools: Using SSRN to Measure Scholarly Performance, 81 Ind. L.J. 83 (2006) (Symposium on The Next Generation of Law School Rankings), is that the SSRN data can play a role in faculty rankings along with these other measures. Bill Henderson (Indiana) thinks we are too modest, and that SSRN may provide a better measure of faculty performance than these other methodologies.
For my other articles on what SSRN downloads can tell us about the current state and future of legal scholarship, and about the relationship between scholarship and blogging, see:
For Ted Seto’s faculty-wide (and metropolitan area-wide) analysis of these SSRN tax rankings, see:
