ELS Ranking Continued: Law Schools as part of the University

The ELS ranking evaluates the intellectual environment and output of an institution by  focusing on education, institutional roles, and publications of faculty.  Yesterday, I posted the results for my proxy for education:  professors with social science doctorates.  Today, I present my findings on institutional role:  professors with secondary appointments.

Law professors with social science secondary appointments would seem more likely to be engaged in ELS research.  Likewise, a law school with close ties to social science departments is more likely to support social science research.  Such joint appointments are a signal of interdisciplinary spirit at the school as well as increased prospects for cross-fertilization.  Of course, an appointment does not equate to activity in another department, nor does it require engagement in empirical scholarship.  But, as a proxy, this measure tells us something about a school.

Law professors are unlikely to hold secondary appointments in social science, as apparent from the list below of the top 10.  Of the remaining 40 schools, 15 have positive percentages below 5% and the remaining 25 have no secondary appointments in social science.

1.  USC (16.7%)

2.  Northwestern (14.3%)

3.  George Mason (9.7%)

4.  UC-Berkeley (9.5%)

5.  Vanderbilt (7.7%)

6.  Wisconsin (7.5%)

7.  Illinois (7.5%)

8.  Yale (7.3%)

9.  Duke (6.4%)

10. Cornell (5.3%)

This proxy is the weakest of the three, in my estimation.  How else can we measure a law school’s connections with social science departments? Law schools that extend secondary or courtesy appointments to social science professors also are more likely to be receptive to interdisciplinary work that includes empirical research and quantitative methods.  It is a far weaker one than primary appointments because it doesn't reflect the same commitment of resources.  Plus, as a practical matter, consistent identification is quite difficult.  Other ideas?

Comments

[Christopher Zorn]

The term "institutional role" suggests an indicator of whether and how law faculty see themselves as embedded in the university's larger intellectual community. I'd suggest that other forms of cross-departmental connections could supplement the joint-appointments measure:

- Percentage of law faculty coauthoring with social scientists in the past X years (this also has the advantage of reflecting, albeit indirectly and imperfectly, the extent to which collaborative/coauthored research is valued by the law school in question),

- Percentage of faculty serving on social science Ph.D. exam and thesis committees,

- Percentage of faculty acting as co-principal investigators on interdisciplinary grant proposals (either internal or extramural).

Of course, data like these would be much harder to get than those on joint appointments... but that's Tracey's problem, not mine. ;-)