Paul Caron posts this interesting note:
The New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts has issued a directive to all New Jersey state court judges to refrain from filling out the reputational survey for the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings:
In Directive #33-65, issued July 8, 1966, Administrative Director McConnell advised the judges of the Supreme Court?s conclusion that it would be inappropriate for judges to participate in the rating of attorneys as part of Martindale-Hubbell?s attorney rating system. That Directive remains in effect.
This Directive is to advise judges that it would be similarly inappropriate to provide ratings of law schools as part of US News & World Report?s survey of "America?s Best Graduate Schools". Judges in your vicinage may have received a request this month to complete a questionnaire rating the various law schools throughout the United States, including New Jersey?s three law schools. Please advise the judges in your vicinages as to the inappropriateness of completing and submitting that survey.
The US News law school survey is deservedly controversial (don't ever get Brian Leiter started on it), but I wonder on what possible grounds New jersey can do this. Don;t judges have free speech rights? I take it that the missive is intended only as advisory rather than mandatory (note the key word "inappropriate"), but even guidance can have a chilling effect. In addition, I wonder whether the authors of the guidance considered the possible effect pointed out by Brian Leiter:
As it stands, of course, removing the New Jersey judges from the pool will simply penalize the New Jersey law schools, which are, presumably, rated more highly by New Jersey judges than judges in neighboring jurisdictions.
Prospective law students considering a NJ law school thus will have to guesstimate the extent to which the law schools under consideration would have ranked higher if NJ's judges had not been dissuaded from participating.
