FACULTY QUALITY BASED ON MEMBERSHIP IN THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS & SCIENCES, 2010
July 15, 2010

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences each year elects members based on their distinguished contributions to scholarship, the arts, education, business, or public affairs.  In reality, the Academy tends to be a bit “chummy”—schools already “rich” with members get “richer,” not always on the merits—though the sins tend to be of omission rather than inclusion.  Faculty also tend to be elected later in their careers (though, on average, female faculty are elected at younger ages than male faculty) and untenured faculty are never elected.  With those caveats in mind, here are the ten law schools with the highest percentage of faculty elected to one of the scholarly sections of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. As you will see from the lists, below, total membership drops off rather quickly.  For purposes of this study, “faculty” means faculty who are wholly devoted to teaching and scholarship, even if they do so at more than one school (e.g., Ronald Gilson at Columbia and Stanford, or Richard Epstein at Chicago and NYU), and only if they do some significant portion of their teaching in law on a regular basis.  These criteria have the effect of excluding distinguished judges who still do some teaching (e.g., Frank Easterbrook, Richard Posner, and Diane Wood at Chicago, or Guide Calabresi at Yale), as well as law faculty elected in non-scholarly sections of the American Academy, like educational administration (e.g., John Sexton at NYU or Mark Yudof at Berkeley). 

Below is a list of the teaching faculty from each school ranked above who are elected to the Law Section of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.  Faculty over 70 (in the year 2010) are marked with an *.  Those marked with an # were elected in a scholarly field other than Law.

1.  Yale Law School (18):  Bruce Ackerman, Akhil Amar, Ian Ayres, Jack M. Balkin, R. Lea Brilmayer, Stephen Carter, Drew Days, Robert Ellickson, William Eskridge, Henry Hansmann, Anthony Kronman, John Langbein, Jerry Mashaw,  Robert C. Post, Judith Resnik, Roberta Romano, *Alan Schwartz, Reva Siegel. 
2.  University of Chicago Law School (8):  Douglas G. Baird, Richard Epstein, R.H. Helmholz, Saul Levmore, #Martha C. Nussbaum, Eric A. Posner, Geoffrey R. Stone, David A. Strauss.
3.  Stanford Law School (12):  *Gerhard Casper, #Joshua Cohen, John J. Donohue III, *Lawrence Friedman, Ronald Gilson, Deborah Hensler, Pamela Karlan, Mark Kelman, Larry Kramer, Michael McConnell, Deborah Rhode, Kathleen Sullivan.

4.  Harvard Law School (24):  Lucian Bebchuk, Robert Clark, Richard Fallon, *Charles Fried, *Mary Ann Glendon, Jack L. Goldsmith III, *Morton Horwitz, Duncan Kennedy, Randall Kennedy, Louis Kaplow, Michael Klarman, Lawrence Lessig, Daniel Meltzer, *Frank Michelman, Martha Minow, Robert Mnookin, Gerald Neuman, Mark Roe, Steven Shavell, William Stuntz, Laurence Tribe, Mark V. Tushnet, Roberto Unger, Elizabeth Warren.

5. Columbia Law School (16):  Vincent Blasi, Philip C. Bobbitt, John Coffee, #Robert Ferguson, *George Fletcher, *Richard Gardner, Ronald Gilson, Michael Graetz, *Jack Greenberg, *Kent Greenawalt, Thomas W. Merrill, *Henry Monaghan, *Joseph Raz, Robert Scott, *Michael Sovern, Peter Strauss.
6.  University of California, Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law (11):  *Richard Buxbaum, *Jesse Choper, Robert Cooter, Christopher F. Edley, Jr., *Melvin Eisenberg, Daniel Farber, *Herma Hill Kay, #Kristin Luker, Daniel Rubinfeld, *Harry Scheiber, Franklin Zimring.
7.  New York University School of Law (16):  *Anthony Amsterdam, *Jerome Cohen, *Norman Dorsen, *Ronald Dworkin, Richard Epstein, #John Ferejohn, Samuel Issacharoff, Sylvia Law, #*Thomas Nagel, Burt Neuborne, Richard H. Pildes, Richard Revesz, #Samuel Scheffler, Richard B. Stewart, Jeremy Waldron, Joseph Weiler.
8.  University of Michigan Law School (6):  #Phoebe Ellsworth, Bruce Frier, Catharine MacKinnon, Margaret Jane Radin, Donald H. Regan, #Rebecca Scott.
9.  University of Virginia School of Law (6):  Kenneth S. Abraham, John C. Jeffries, Jr., Douglas Laycock, Paul G. Mahoney, Frederick Schauer, G. Edward White.

10.  Duke University School of Law (3):  *Paul Carrington, #Donald Horowitz, David F. Levi.
Other law school faculties with teaching faculty elected to the AAAS:

Cornell:                        Theodore Eisenberg
Northwestern:               #Lee Epstein
Texas:                          Philip Bobbitt, Sanford Levinson
UCLA:             *Joel Handler, Seana Shiffrin
Iowa:                            Herbert Hovenkamp
Colorado:                     Robert Nagel
Arizona:                        Carol Rose
San Diego:                    *Carl Auerbach, *Yale Kamisar
Tulane:             James Gordley
Miami:                          *William Twining
UC Hastings:                *Geoffrey Hazard
William & Mary:           *William van Alstyne