UCLA School of Law’s academic excellence and national prominence has been highlighted in a new publication that tabulates the most influential and impactful current legal scholars.

In total, five UCLA Law professors are included on the list, published in the article “The Top 100 Legal Scholars of 2024.” The other law schools with five recognized faculty members are those at Yale University, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the University of Virginia. UCLA Law also had the second-highest number of women – three – who were included.

The rankings, compiled by Rob Willey and Melanie Knapp of George Mason University’s law library, are based on citations to law review articles between 2018 and 2020.

That methodology, Willey and Knapp assert, allows them “to locate and recognize the work of a much broader range of scholars than existing ranking systems do…. In addition to opening the door to a much wider range of authors, our ranking also better identifies the scholars currently producing top scholarship. By relying on career publications, other ranking systems give too much weight to past work and scholars end up ranking well based primarily on their past, not their current, writing. Because our ranking only considers recent work, it identifies and recognizes scholars who are currently producing impactful scholarship.”

Out of roughly 10,000 faculty members in all law schools nationwide, these were the UCLA Law professors who made the list:

• Joanna Schwartz (No. 15)
• Ingrid Eagly (No. 39)
• Eugene Volokh (No. 54)
• Andrew Selbst (No. 72)
• Beth Colgan (No. 76)

This publication comes on the heels of the most recent installment of the triennial scholarly impact rankings that Gregory Sisk and Brian Leiter compile, which this year placed UCLA Law’s faculty at No. 11 in the nation.