Most Productive Environmental Law Scholars 2005-2009 at "Top" Environmental Schools

Here's my list, in rank order, of professors with number of law review publications during the period 2005-2009  listed in parenthesis after school affiliation (US News ranked programs only).  Methodology explained below the fold.

1.  Dan Farber (Berkeley) (31)

2. John R. Nolon (Pace) (16)

     J.B. Ruhl (FSU) (16)

4.  Lisa Heinzerling (Georgetown) (14)

5. Hope Babcock (Georgetown) (13)

    Richard J. Lazarus (Georgetown) (13)

7. Robert L. Rabin (Stanford) (11)

      Jason Czarnezki (Vermont) (11) [ -- unintentionally omitted from first post.  BJC]

9. Robin Kundis Craig (FSU) (10)

     Jim Rossi (FSU) (10)       

11.  Holly Doremus (Berkeley) (9)

        Robert Howse (NYU) (9)

Methodology:

1.  Defining the "Subject Pool."

The subject pool includes only faculty members at schools having ranked Environmental Law speciality programs (according to US News, as an external reference point).  As I mentioned in an earlier post (here), my colleague Emily Waldman and I consulted the list of faculty members self-identified in the 2009-2010 American Association of Law Schools Faculty Directory as teaching “Environmental Law.”  We then consulted each school's website. Third, we made a person-by-person determination about each individual listed either in the AALS Faculty Directory or on the school‟s website. Fourth, we consulted with colleagues with experience in environmental law.  The end result was a list of several hundred "environmental faculty members" whose scholarly productivity we then attempted to measure.  We were trying to capture tenured, tenure-track and FTE professors (long-term contract professors). 

2.  On every person in the Subject Pool,  we ran a Westlaw search, Leiter-style search: 

AU(FIRST /2 LAST) & DA(BEF 2010) & SO("REVIEW") or SO("LAW QUARTERLY") OR SO ("JOURNAL") %SO(BAR /1 JOURNAL) %SO(BAR /1 NEWS) %SO(NEWSLETTER) %SO(ABA) %SO(ALI-ABA) %SO(PLI) %SO(BAR /1 ASSOCIATION).  That will get you all articles, without date limitation.  You then have to refine by date, or you can search that way initially -- i.e., & da(aft 2004 & bef 2010).

3.  The full results are here.  Download ProductivityatTopEnviroSchools

A few caveats about the results:

First, coverage by the Westlaw database – JLR –  is not the only place where environmental scholarship can be found.  Faculty members, whether or not environmental law specialists, engage in many academic and professional activities that are not captured entirely, adequately or, in some cases, at all, in these standardized electronic searches. Scholarly monographs, most notably, are not captured in the searc

Second, the search results do not distinguish between publications by quality, length or type. A three-page introduction to a symposium, a short review essay and a 70-page article “count” equally.  

Third, the search did not distinguish between "environmental" and "non-environmental" articles.

Fourth, the search results do not take into account a faculty member‟s relative seniority (or lack thereof). 

Corrections and comments very welcome. 

Comments

[Tim Zinnecker]

At #14, "Ross" should be "Rossi." And I'm surprised that Jim's colleague at FSU, J.B. Ruhl, didn't make the list.

[Bridget Crawford]

Thanks, Tim. The data now matches the description and vice-versa. And sorry to Jim Rossi for missing that "i." It's back!

[Jessica Owley]

Why only schools with ranked environmental law programs? Of course, if you went outside that list of 10 you'd see many other folks jump up. (Patty Salkin must be near the top.)

It's fascinating, but I am wondering why you guys undertook this study. To figure out the top enviro scholars? to point out that the top ten enviro schools don't include many great scholars? to point out that to get into the top ten, a school needs enviro folks publishing at this level?

just curious

[Anon]

Who are the most highly published environment law scholars of single authored works?

[Anon]

An equally interesting metric would be if the study authors would measure grammr and spelling in environmental law scholarshp.

Ummm. Never mind. The authors don't appear qualified to measure that.

[Bridget Crawford]

A reader contacted me to point out that my search does not capture the specialty journals at Duke or Lewis & Clark. I will revise the list accordingly.

[Rob Truman]

Thanks for posting your results. One problem with the search is that not all journals have 'review,' 'journal,' or 'law quarterly' in their title.

This leads to the exclusion from your research of articles appearing in at least one leading journal, Environmental Law (published here at Lewis & Clark Law School).

For example, one of our more prolific authors, Michael Blumm, has 7 articles resulting from the search used for the study, above. Including "or so("environmental law")" in the search increases his results to 14.

Other titles missing from these results include Missouri Environmental Law & Policy Review, Animal Law (also at my institution), and many non-specialized journals lacking review, journal or quarterly in the title.

Though never perfect, perhaps just removing "& SO("REVIEW") or SO("LAW QUARTERLY") OR SO ("JOURNAL")" would solve this particular issue without providing overly broad results.

[Anon]

I agree with Owley. Why only schools with supposedly "ranked" environmental law programs? What a waste of time.

[Jonathan H. Adler]

The list is particularly odd in that it omits people who are quite productive in environmental law but who are not at programs that make the list. I'm thinking of folks like James Salzman (Duke), Doug Kysar (Yale), Thomas Merrill (Columbia), Alex Klass (Minnesota), Victor Flatt (UNC), Tom McGarity (Texas), and William Buzbee (Emory). Any list that excludes all these folks isn't really measuring the "most productive environmental law scholars."

JHA

[Robin Craig]

I'm happy to make the list, but my my count I've published more like 15-16 articles from 2005-2009.

Robin Craig

[Alex Camacho]

Adding to Jonathan's list (and in addition to Jonathan himself), how about David Dana, Dan Tarlock, Buzz Thompson, Bob Percival, Jody Freeman, Ollie Houck, Brad Karkkainen, ...