Our dean sent around an email today, which highlights how well UCLA scholars did in Fred R. Shapiro and Michelle Pearse's analysis of “The Most-Cited Law Review Articles of All Time,” 110 Michigan Law Review 1483 (June 2012):
UCLA School of Law placed fourth among law schools in terms of the number of faculty who held appointments at the school when they produced recent works that ranked among the most cited. Only Yale, Harvard and Chicago were ahead of us. And, we also were fourth among law schools in terms of the number of current faculty members whose recent articles were among the most cited. Here, we were behind only Yale, Harvard and Stanford. This is good company indeed!
I would be remiss if I did not identify the individual faculty whose work made the list. Among our current faculty, Kimberlé Crenshaw had two articles and Frances E. Olsen had one article among the most-cited law review articles of all time. Faculty also wrote articles among the five most-cited in 1991 (Kimberlé Crenshaw); 1993 (Cheryl Harris); 1999 (Lynn Stout); 2000 (Russell Korobkin (with Thomas S. Ulen)); 2003 (Stephen M. Bainbridge); 2005 (Jerry Kang); and 2006 (Stephen M. Bainbridge; Adam Winkler). Lynn Stout wrote one of the most cited articles in corporate and securities law, while Frances E. Olsen wrote one of the most cited in family law.
In analyzing the findings, the authors conclude that “[t]he University of California-Los Angeles (“UCLA”) takes a surprising fourth place.”
I'm not surprised. We've got a strong and intellectually diverse faculty whose reputation score in the US News silliness is surprisingly low. (BTW, you did notice which UCLAW faculty member was the only one with two articles in the annual most cited lists from 1991 to 2011, didn't you? Having said that, of course, many kudos to my Kimberlé Crenshaw who had two of the most cited articles of all time. Damned impressive.)
