Long way to go in legal academy

Old enough to remember when legal citations eschewed the author's 1st name in favor of 1st initial only?
That style served to obscure the lopsidedness of the legal academy: virtually all the names lurking behind A., B., and C. were men. The mask's largely been lifted, so that each of us today cites in full consciousness of whom we are citing, man or woman. I suspect the change has had good effects, not least among them recognition that women as well as men contribute their voices to this generation of legal scholarship.
Thus even as I celebrated the news that my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) is among the Top 25 Law Faculties in Scholarly Impact according to a just-published 2005-2009 survey, I could not but raise a curious eyebrow at the decision of number-cruncher extraordinaire Brian Leiter (prior IntLawGrrls posts here and here) to list the 10 most-cited members of each law faculty by the equation of initial + surname.
A look underneath the veil of that device revealed much:
► In none of the top 25 schools were more than 4 women among the top 10 most-cited scholars, and only 3 of the 25 earned even that scarcely heart-warming 40% rate.
► Double that number -- fully 6 law schools -- do not have a single woman among their top 10 most-cited.
The rest ranged from 1 to 3 women out of 10.
Proud to say that among the women receiving top recognition are 2 IntLawGrrls, Naomi Cahn and yours truly, as well as a number of others whom we've featured in posts: not only my California-Davis colleague Madhavi Sunder, but also Kimberlé Crenshaw, Martha Albertson Fineman, Vicki Jackson, Pamela Karlan, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Martha Minow (left), Rachel Moran, Catharine MacKinnon (bottom left), Martha Nussbaum, Margaret Jane Radin, and Dinah Shelton.
Proud too to see on the list a close law school classmate, Kirsten H. Engel, as well as the only woman professor I had in law school, Carol M. Rose.
Can't help, though, but be concerned about the dearth of women on this list (reflective, no doubt, of the proportion in the academy as a whole, an issue that my deans, Kevin Johnson and Vik Amar, tackle in this new column on need for faculty diversity).
And can't help harbor concern about the fact that not 1 woman is on Brian's list of Ten Most Cited Faculty 2005-2009; indeed, the list drops a full 660 citations to get to the 1st woman (Kathleen Sullivan) below the 10th man (Bruce Ackerman).
In short, still a very long way to go.

Here's the roundup, with 1st as well as last name provided in full:

Most women among top 10 (4 each):
► Arizona (ranked #21): Jean Braucher, Kirsten H. Engel, Toni Massaro, Carol M. Rose (#10 most-cited woman)
► California-Irvine (#9): Catherine Fisk, Elizabeth Loftus, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Rachel Moran
► Michigan (#11): Rebecca Eisenberg, Jessica Litman, Catharine MacKinnon (#4 most-cited woman), Margaret Jane Radin (#7 most-cited woman)

Next most -- 3 women among top 10:
► Georgetown (#20): Julie Cohen, Vicki Jackson, Robin West
► Stanford (#4): Pamela Karlan, Deborah Rhode (#3 most-cited woman), Kathleen Sullivan (#1 most-cited woman)
► UCLA (#15): Kimberlé Crenshaw, Katherine Stone, Lynn Stout
► Vanderbilt (#10): Margaret Blair, Nancy King, Suzanna Sherry

Next next-most -- 2 women among top 10:
► California-Davis (#23): Diane Marie Amann, Madhavi Sunder
► Chicago (#3): Lisa Bernstein, Martha Nussbaum (#5 most-cited woman)
► Emory (#23): Martha Albertson Fineman, Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
► George Washington (#18): Naomi Cahn, Dinah Shelton
► Northwestern (#8): Lee Epstein, Dorothy E. Roberts

Only 1 woman among top 10:
► California-Berkeley (#7): Pamela Samuelson
► Columbia (#6): Jane Ginsburg
► Cornell (#11): Valerie Hans
► Harvard (#2): Martha Minow (#2 most-cited woman)
► Illinois (#21): Cynthia Williams
► Penn (#14): Jill Fisch
► Yale (#1): Reva Siegel (#5 most-cited woman)

Not even 1 woman among top 10:
► Duke (#11)
► Florida State (#23)
► Minnesota (#19)
► NYU (#5)
► Texas (#17)
► Virginia (#16)

Perhaps 'nuff said, but thoughts welcome.

The next Justice

Popping into a White House press briefing, President Barack Obama just confirmed that Justice David Souter is retiring after 19 years on the U.S. Supreme Court. (Souter's resignation letter is here.)
Last night's leak of the news already has opened floodgates of speculation about who will succeed Souter. Will it be:
► A woman? Lots of folks think this is a good idea. It sure would end the isolation that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often lamented -- most recently, as we posted, just a couple weeks ago -- since the departure of her colleague, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. More women, moreover, sure would make the Court's group photo look more like those of most U.S. law school student bodies, many faculties, and lots of law firms.
► Someone versed in transnational and international law? IntLawGrrls can't help but like the idea, explored in depth here by our colleague Peter Spiro. If this proves a criterion, a few people whose names already are cropping up on short lists jump to mind: Judge Diane P. Wood (below right) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago (same title once held by Obama), who gave a terrific talk on globalization and law at a 2007 conference cosponsored by the Association of American Law Schools and the American Society of International Law; another speaker at that 2007 ASIL/AALS conference, Harold Hongju Koh, Yale Law Dean and State Department Legal Adviser nominee, about whom IntLawGrrls readers know much from these posts; and Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Circuit, a federal jurisdiction/civil procedure professor at California-Berkeley and a participant in talks on globalization and law, among them Réseau ID, in which several IntLawGrrls and Koh also have taken part.
► A Latino/a? Our colleague and California-Davis Law Dean Kevin Johnson has examined this idea in 2 articles, available here and here.
► The 1st openly gay nominee? That's the hope of some, according to this article.
► Someone with significant military experience? Our colleague Eugene R. Fidell, the President of the National Institute of Military Justice now visiting at Yale Law School, made a persuasive argument for that trait in his presentation on the "Security" panel of the March symposium in honor of Justice John Paul Stevens at California-Davis, available now on webcast and soon in print in the UC Davis Law Review.
► Someone whose legal experience comes from the practice rather than from academia or the bench? One name that's already surfaced in this regard is Teresa Wynn Roseborough (left), Chief Litigation Counsel at MetLife, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, former partner at Atlanta's Sutherland Asbill firm, former Stevens clerk, and former Chairman of the Board of the American Constitution Society. Teresa gave a terrific talk on the "Equality" panel at our JPS symposium: drawing on her experience arguing on behalf of Al Gore before the 11th Circuit en banc, she deployed actual chad-cards and actual Florida voting booths to persuade the symposium audience that Justice Stevens and other Supreme Court dissenters in Bush v. Gore (2000) had the better view of the case. (Webcast here.)
All the traits above, and more, no doubt will be weighed as Obama moves toward his ultimate choice. As he does, let's hope he keeps well in mind the overarching criterion Obama himself set at today's press briefing:

'I will seek someone with a sharp and independent mind.'

California International Law Center launch

This Wednesday will mark yet another inauguration -- that is, the Inaugural Celebration of the California International Law Center at King Hall, the newest initiative of my home institution, the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Am proud to say that Dean Kevin R. Johnson has named yours truly founding Director of the Center, which we've short-named CILC (pronounced "silk").
Our February 4 noon-hour kickoff, cosponsored by the Black Law Students Association and the International Law Society, will feature a very special program (tape to be posted at our new website). 1st, opening remarks from Kevin and me. Then we'll hear about the Global Vision & Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., from Dr. Clayborne Carson (left), Professor of History and founding Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, and editor of the King papers. Dr. Carson will talk from an international perspective about the namesake of our law school, Dr. King, who in 1964 became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and who later invoked international law to explain his opposition to the Vietnam War.
Indeed, in a speech delivered 7 years before the Peace Prize, King himself linked civil rights at home to human rights abroad. He asked:

As we move to make justice a reality on the international scale, as we move to make justice a reality in this nation, how will the struggle be waged?

Events, projects, and programs of CILC will work toward answers:
► The new Center's already cosponsored -- along with the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas and College of Letters & Sciences at the University of California, Davis, the International Justice Network, New York, and the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School -- a 2-day exploratory discussion concerning a commission of inquiry to examine U.S. detention policies and practices after September 11, 2001.
► And CILC's already partnered with the the 40-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, to help drafting a framework for peace and reconciliation in Darfur. More later on this Darfur Project, to which a host of guest lecturers also are contributing teir time and expertise.
Wish us well as we endeavor to meet the challenge posed by Dr. King.

(A grateful hat tip to Legal History Blog for posting on our new Center)

Migrants Day marathon

Courtesy of Dean Kevin Johnson, our friends at ImmigrationProf blog remind us that today is International Migrants Day. For details on the history of the day, and on a radio marathon ongoing to raise awareness of migrant issues, click here.

Read On! Proposing a Solution to the Failure of the United States' Immigration Policy

(Read On! ... occasional posts on writing we're reading)

Immigration policy in the United States is in disarray. The legal regime exists in contradiction to the market realities of the U.S. job market and the effects of an increasingly globalized and integrated world. It is the search for opportunity and response to transborder economic incentives, not the desire to break the domestic laws of the United States, that draw immigrants to the United States. The legal regime and stepped-up enforcement (for example, the recent raids, including the Postville, Iowa, debacle) also contradict the civil rights and human rights ideals and laws which the United States is obligated to adhere.
The recent book by Kevin R. Johnson, Dean at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink Its Borders and Immigration Laws, offers a calm, rational and far-seeing proposal for resolving the hornets’ nest of U.S. immigration law. Johnson analyzes the history of immigration policy in the United States, pointing to the often conflicting impulses of welcome and exclusion, racial animus, exploitation, and cruelty with which the policy is rife. He offers the provocative but well-thought out solution of opening the borders and welcoming would-be immigrants who do not offer a threat to national security and health.
Despite the apprehensions and misunderstandings regarding the potential results of implementing such a policy, Dean Johnson offers a convincing argument that his proposed solution offers the best resolution for the current immigration disaster.
In our review of the book, my colleague Maria Pabón Lopez and I, conclude:

Once the predictable partisans in the immigration debate – politicians, business and labor interests, anti immigration activists, and nativists, among others – overcome their initial distaste at the very term open border, they may over time realize that this may be the only way to fix the immigration system which all agree is broken.

I encourage everyone who cares about U.S. immigration policy and the stature of the United States to read this timely contribution to the literature.

More new (Int)Law Deans

Delighted to announce that 2 more persons whose scholarship examines international/comparative/transnational law have been appointed law deans.
Appointment of my colleague Kevin R. Johnson (right) as the incoming Dean of the University of California, Davis, School of Law (Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall) became official yesterday, by vote of the university's regents. Expert in immigration and refugee law (he's a cofounder of ImmigrationProf Blog), critical race theory, and civil rights law, Kevin, our Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies, will be the 1st Latino to head a UC law school. His book How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man's Search for Identity (1999) was nominated for a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
Earlier this month Makau Mutua (below left), with whom I've been proud to serve on the Executive Committee and Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, was named Dean of the University at Buffalo Law School, where he's been interim dean this past semester. SUNY Distinguished Professor and Floyd H. and Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, Makau is director of the Buffalo Human Rights Center, having previously served as Associate Director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School. Expert in international human rights, international business transactions, and international law, his most recent book is Kenya’s Quest for Democracy: Taming Leviathan (2008). While on sabbatical in his native Kenya, Makau was appointed to chair that country's Task Force on the Establishment of a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission.
Kevin and Makau join swelling ranks of (Int)Law Deans: those we've mentioned, like Janet Koven Levit (Tulsa), Nora V. Demleitner (Hofstra), and David Wippmann (Minnesota), and others whom we've not yet had a chance to mention, like Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker (Pacific McGeorge), Hiram Chodosh (Utah), Harold Hongju Koh (Yale), and T. Alexander Aleinikoff (Georgetown).
Have we forgotten anyone?