Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Citation Count Neighborhoods

Roger Alford uses a Monopoly analogy to argue that:

Brian Leiter has just published his ranking of the Most Cited Law Professors by Specialty, 2000-2007. There are many interesting reflections one could draw from this list, but one that I find particularly important is what I will call the Monopoly Board of Citation Rankings. If you’re in the “wrong” neighborhood, a citation value of 250 is phenomenal. If you’re in a really nice neighborhood, a citation value of 250 is good. But if you’re in the best neighborhood, a citation value of 250 is, well, respectable.

Leiter’s findings strongly reinforce the common perception that it is much easier to be viewed as successful if you publish in certain specialties rather than others. That is, it is far easier to be cited frequently if you are a constitutional law or business law scholar and far more difficult to be cited frequently if you write about tax, labor, or heaven forbid, trusts & estates.

It’s certainly true that the top constitutional law scholars have higher cite counts than the top T&E scholars. But I’m not persuaded that “it is much easier to be viewed as successful if you publish in certain specialties rather than others.” There are a lot fewer T&E scholars than Con Law scholars. I know. I’ve been on three failed searches for T&E laterals at two different law schools. It is a very small field when you start focusing on those teachers who are also top scholars. A top T&E scholar may never have as many cites as a top Con Law scholar, BUT I supect it a lot easier to become a big fish in that small pool than to become a big fish in the Con Law pool. Everything is relative.