University of California, Berkeley: important faculty additions (notably, Philip Frickey).

University of Virginia: significant and continued losses of highly productive and highly cited faculty were setbacks. Only the high student quality ranking, together with the boost for teaching excellence, saved UVA from a steep drop in the overall ranking this year (compare their faculty quality rank by objective measures).

Cornell University: losses of Lynn LoPucki (to UCLA), Fred McChesney (to Northwestern), and Charles Wolfram (to retirement) were major setbacks, affecting both per capita citations and productivity.

University of California, Los Angeles: some faculty gains were offset by the retirement of the most highly cited member of the faculty, Kenneth Karst (who was also one of the fifty most frequently cited law professors in America).

Boston University: addition of Gary Lawson (Northwestern) helped improve both per capita citations and productivity.

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: addition of William Marshall (Case Western) helped improve per capita citations and productivity, though the UNC faculty just proved to be more productive for the 1998-2000 period than the earlier 1995-1998 period.

Emory University: increased productivity for 1998-2000 period was the key factor.

University of Colorado, Boulder: loss of the highly cited and very productive Steven D. Smith (to Notre Dame) was the main setback.

University of Notre Dame: addition of Smith had to be balanced against the loss of John Garvey to Boston College and Thomas Shaffer to retirement.

Washington University, St. Louis: additions of Joel Seligman was a major factor in boosting Wash U's rank.

University of Wisconsin, Madison: a graying faculty is not as productive as it once was; also, the school got unusually low student quality scores, perhaps an artifact of years of mistreatment by U.S. News.

University of Iowa: this was the single most surprising result, attributable, in part, to some recent high-profile losses of highly cited, productive faculty--especially Michael Saks, but also James Anaya and Michael Green--combined with what may simply have been a fluke of a low productivity period studied (1998-2000).

George Mason University: important senior appointments (Daniel Polsby from Northwestern, Gordon Tullock from Arizona) were important to the school's continued rise. The school's subjective reputation continues to lag.

University of San Diego: additions of Sai Prakash (from BU), and Heidi Hurd and Michael Moore (from Penn) were crucial to the school's improved ranking by objective measures of faculty quality. The school's subjective reputation continues, however, to lag.