As a newcomer from a career in public service and private practice, my first year as dean of Rutgers Law School-Newark has been marked by surprises. Most of them have validated my decision to enter the academic world. One surprise has, however, left me deeply disturbed because it undermines the integrity of legal education and the diversity of our profession: the prominence of the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings.
I had hoped that the American Bar Association’s study of the rankings would result in their demise, but the study’s tepid conclusion – that the rankings are “not entirely benign,” but a fact of life – vastly understates, in my view, their harm to legal education and to the profession.
