Query whether the location of the law school has any impact on the quality of business law scholars and/or the degree of student interest in business law itself. For example, Baylor, SMU, and UH are comparably ranked. But their respective locations (Waco, Dallas, Houston) might suggest that the quality of business law scholars and/or the degree of student interest in business law is (should be) higher at SMU and UH. The same might be said for Utah (Salt Lake City) v. BYU (Provo), Emory (Atlanta) v. Georgia (Athens), Miami (Miami) v. UF (Gainesville), etc.

That's a tough question, Tim. Some of the best business scholars are in the middle of nowhere (e.g. Madison, Iowa City, Charlottesville). But I think you are right that, all else equal, big city schools tend to draw more students interested in business, and since students probably learn as much from each other as they do from faculty, there is something to be said for going to the big city.

Posner has a surprisingly strongly worded comment on affirmative action:

"Berkeley is notorious for affirmative action, which is probably what is responsible for its unimpressive showing in column 3, and I would predict that the result would be a distinct dumbing down of the teaching there."

Describing Berkeley's affirmative action as "notorious" seems a bit excessive.

Like Tim, I was also thinking of location. Sure, the top schools can be located anywhere (Charlottesville, Ann Arbor, etc.) and the firms will come, as will the scholars. However, outside of the top 20-25, I think location is important. Baylor/UH isn't a fair comparison because Baylor fancies itself a litigation school, but other schools like UH in urban areas have distinguished themselves in the area of corporate law. For example, Fordham.

"Notorious" is a strong word, indeed. He may be referring the widely held belief that Berkeley, which is bound by governing state law not to use affirmative action, does so knowingly but stealthily. Whether or not Berkeley cheats was even discussed obliquely in the US Supreme Court's recent affirmative action opinions. The idea (not yet proven) that a law school deliberately flouts the law might be considered notorious by some, and heroic by others.

I agree with Christine's observation that Baylor views itself as a "litigation school." But I always chuckle at such a label (and at students who decline to take business/commercial courses because they want to be "litigators"). What is being "litigated" (or being taught at "litigation schools")? Page lengths, margins, fonts, brief cover colors, submission deadlines, bluebook citation forms, etc.? I would hope that aspiring "litigators" (and "litigation schools") are learning (teaching) some of the substance that is at the heart of litigation, whether it be UCC Article 9, the Securities Act of 1933, the Internal Revenue Code, etc. One can't be an effective litigator (or a litigation school) without knowing (offering) some substantive law.

"Badly out of date" seems more than a little hyperbolic on the evidence adduced (Macey left Cornell, two USC professors are visiting elsewhere, but haven't resigned from USC). Most of the top 20 are, in fact, basically unchanged, the exceptions being Cornell (loss of Macey), Yale (additions of Macey and Donohue), and Texas (addition of Black). Stanford and NYU probably amount to a wash (Stanford lost Black, added Daines; NYU lost Daines, added Choi).

Also not sure on what basis you think the methodology overweights superstars (it can't just be that you would rate the schools differently--the nature of a survey aggregating expert opinion is that almsot invariably no individual will agree with the results). It's true the rankings are premised on the idea that learning from the best people in a field is a better than learning from the second-tier people, but given that the evaluators were experts, I would expect them to be knowledgeable about the quality of both senior and junior folks. A good example would be NYU, which rated quite highly, even though much (not all) of their business law team is fairly young (Daines, Kahan).

The use Dick Posner makes of these rankings is a different matter, about which I'm commenting for the Indiana symposium.

Kamar and Talley are, as Brian pointed out, just visiting away. Also, USC has hired Spindler in the meantime.