Fred Shapiro has published an update of his famous articles "setting forth lists of the most-cited law review articles."
Table I is the ranking of the top 100 most-cited articles of all time. Be- cause it takes decades for an article to amass the stratospheric citation count needed to make such a list, I compiled additional rankings (Table II) of the five most-cited legal articles published each year from 1990 to 2009. Individual-year listings were necessary because, for recent articles, the number of citations needed to be a citation leader rises rapidly from each year to the one before it. For example, a 2007 article has little chance of competing with the leaders published in 2005.
Sadly, yours truly has no articles appearing Table I. But I do have two appearing in Table II:
Having two articles in that period puts me in pretty good company:
Mark A. Lemley coauthored an astounding 9 of the top 100 most-cited recent articles. [Ed.: Kudos!] ... [Cass] Sunstein has six papers on the recent-articles list. ... Akhil Reed Amar is third on the recent-articles list with four, followed by William N. Eskridge, Jr., Robert C. Post, and Reva B. Siegel (three each); and Stephen M. Bainbridge, Lucian Arye Bebchuk, Yochai Benkler, Curtis A. Bradley, John C. Coffee, Jr., Jack L. Goldsmith, Dan M. Kahan, Harold H. Koh, Lawrence Lessig, and A. Benjamin Spencer (two each).
Meanwhile, by another of Shapiro's measures, it looks like I'm two-thirds of the way to a great career:
The law professor equivalent of career hits is the “number of times cited” in journals. The stat is a measure of influence .... [A] high citation count opens doors, just the same. Institutions consider them when doling out grant awards, awarding tenure or making promotion decisions.
“Three thousand hits means you’ve had a great career. I’d say 3,000 citations means you’re one of the all time citation champions,” said Fred Shapiro .... (Source)
As Will Sonnett used to say, "no brag, just fact."
