University of Chicago Law School
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| University of Chicago Law School | |
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| Established: | 1902 |
| Type: | Private |
| Endowment: | US $209 million |
| Dean: | Saul Levmore |
| Staff: | 124 |
| Students: | 589 |
| Location: | Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Campus: | Urban |
| Website: | http://www.law.uchicago.edu/ |
The University of Chicago Law School, having recently celebrated its centennial in the 2002-2003 school year, has established itself as a high profile part of the University of Chicago.
It is ranked 7th overall in the US News & World Report graduate school rankings, with its student body ranking 5th in the nation. [1] Additionally, Chicago's faculty has the highest per capita article citation rate of any American law school. [2] The Law School is also notable for having the third highest gross and second highest per capita placement of alumni as U.S. Supreme Court clerkships [3], with roughly 15-25% of each graduating class going on to clerkships at the federal or state level. Private career prospects are equally bright for graduates, placing highly into elite firms. [4] The school awards the Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree, having been the first American law school to do so, as well as the L.L.M., J.S.D and D.Comp.L solely to foreign trained lawyers.
The Law School is well-known for its advancement of the application of social science to the law. A significant movement in jurisprudence began at the law school when Aaron Director initiated the first modern systemic investigation between the intersection of law and economics, an area in which the law school's faculty figure prominently.
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[edit] Publications
The University of Chicago Law Review is one of the school's flagship student-run journals. The Chicago Journal of International Law and the University of Chicago Legal Forum are the Law School's other student-run journals. Students interested in membership on any of these journals participate in a writing competition at the end of the first year. The Law Review selects 19 students for membership based on first year GPA ("grade on"), and 10 students for the quality of their writing competition submission ("write on"). The other two student-run journals select members on the basis of writing competition submissions alone (without regard to GPA). All three student-run journals also allow second and third year students to "write on" by submitting a piece of legal scholarship worthy of publication.
The Supreme Court Review, published by the law school and overseen by faculty since the 1960s, remains the most cited legal journal internationally with respect to commentary on the nation's highest court. The faculty also oversees publication of the Journal of Law and Economics and the Journal of Legal Studies.
[edit] Legal Clinics
The Law School boasts three highly-regarded legal clinics: the Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, the Immigrant Children's Advocacy Project, and the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship. Second and third year students at the Law School are afforded the opportunity to work within these clinics
Courses that are linked to these clinical programs include: Appellate Advocacy, the Civil Rights Police Accountability Project, the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project, the Employment Discrimination Project, the Housing Initiative, Mental Health Advocacy (within the Mandel Clinic), Immigrant Children's Advocacy, and Entrepreneurship (associated with the Institute for Justice).
[edit] Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic
You can view more information on the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at their website.
Description forthcoming
[edit] Immigrant Children's Advocacy Project
You can view more information on the Immigrant Children's Advocacy Project at their website.
Description forthcoming
[edit] Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship
You can view more information on the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at their website.
Description forthcoming
[edit] Student Organizations
The Law School is home to one of the three founding chapters of the Federalist Society, and to the 'Antient and Honourable Edmund Burke Society', a conservative debating organization. It is also home to a large chapter of the progressive American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.
[edit] Grading
The Law School employs a unique grading system with a range from 155 to 186. These numerical grades convert to the more familiar alphabetical scale as follows: 155-159 = F, 160-167 = D, 168-173 = C, 174-179 = B, 180-186 = A. For classes of more than 50 students, the median grade is 177, and the number of As should approximately equal the number of Cs.
A student graduates "with honors" if a final average of 179 is attained, "with high honors" if a final average of 180.5 is attained, and "with highest honors" if a final average of 182 is attained. The latter achievement is rare; typically only one student every few years will attain the requisite 182 average. Additionally, the Law School awards two class-rank based honors at graduation. The top 10% are honored as "Order of the Coif," and the top 5% are honored as "Kirkland Scholars" (a designation created in 2006 by a $7 million donation from the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis). [5]
The grading scale was previously 55-86, but the school prefixed their grades with a "1" in 2003 to avoid confusion with traditional grading scales.
[edit] Prominent faculty
- Douglas Baird
- Emily Buss
- Adam Cox
- Ronald Coase
- Brainerd Currie (deceased)
- David P. Currie (deceased)
- Judge Frank H. Easterbrook (alumnus)
- Richard Epstein
- Daniel Fischel
- Grant Gilmore (deceased)
- Judge Douglas Ginsburg (alumnus)
- Bernard Harcourt
- Richard H. Helmholz
- Dennis J. Hutchinson
- Dallin H. Oaks (former faculty member)
- William Landes
- Brian Leiter
- Lawrence Lessig (former faculty member)
- Saul Levmore
- Catharine MacKinnon (former faculty member)
- Judge Michael W. McConnell (former faculty member and alumnus)
- Bernard D. Meltzer (former faculty member)
- Judge Abner Mikva
- Martha Nussbaum
- U.S. Senator Barack Obama (on leave of absence)
- Judge Richard A. Posner
- Eric Posner
- Gerald N. Rosenberg
- Justice Antonin Scalia (former faculty member)
- Justice John Paul Stevens (former lecturer)
- Geoffrey R. Stone (alumnus)
- David Strauss
- Cass Sunstein (leaving for Harvard Law School, fall 2008)[6]
- Judge Diane Pamela Wood
[edit] Notable alumni
- John Ashcroft: Former U.S. Senator, Governor of Missouri, and Attorney General of the United States
- Alfred C. Aman, Jr.: Dean of Suffolk University Law School and Indiana University School of Law
- Robert Bork: Former Solicitor General of the United States, acting Attorney General of the United States, and Judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; unsuccessfully nominated to the Supreme Court
- Carol Moseley Braun: U.S. Senator from Illinois; first (and only) African-American female U.S. Senator; sought 2004 Democratic Party presidential nomination
- Ramsey Clark: Former Attorney General of the United States
- James Comey: Former Acting Attorney General of the United States, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, and former United States Attorney (for the Southern District of New York)
- James Hormel: First openly gay United States Ambassador (to Luxembourg)
- Douglas H. Ginsburg: Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; unsuccessfully nominated to the Supreme Court
- Mary Ann Glendon: Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University; US Ambassador to the Holy See
- Jan Crawford Greenburg: ABC News legal correspondent (well known for Supreme Court coverage)
- David Aaron Kessler: Former FDA Commissioner, former Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, and current Dean of the University of California, San Francisco Medical School
- Amy Klobuchar: U.S. Senator from Minnesota
- Rex E. Lee: Former Solicitor General of the United States and President of Brigham Young University
- Edward H. Levi: Former Attorney General of the United States
- Harvey Levin: Popular purveyor of celebrity gossip and legal commentary
- Michael W. McConnell: Judge on the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
- Patsy Mink: First female minority member of the United States Congress (Congresswoman from Hawaii)
- Abner J. Mikva: Former U.S. Congressman from Illinois and Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
- Nicholas J. Pritzker: Chairman of the Board and CEO of the Hyatt Development Corporation
- Thomas Pritzker: Chairman and CEO of Global Hyatt Corporation
- David M. Rubenstein, Founder, The Carlyle Group
- Kyle Sampson
- Adam Silver: NBA Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer
- Jim Talent: Former U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator from Missouri
- Avraam Tobelson, known as Alexander Krasnoshchyokov, the Head of the Far Eastern Republic (1920 to 1921)
- Shimon Agranat: President of the Israeli Supreme Court 1965-1976
[edit] External links
- The University of Chicago Law School
- The University of Chicago
- The University of Chicago Law Review
- The University of Chicago Faculty Blog
