The Most Cited Law Faculty, 2016-2020 (Updated)

A few Volokh Conspirators are among the most cited legal scholars in their fields.

[Reposted with an updated list of subject matter and regularly updated.]

Publication of the 2021 Sisk, et al., study of law faculty scholarly impact, Brian Leiter has been compiling lists of the most cited law faculty by subject areas for the period 2016-2020, as well as an overall list of the most cited law faculty.

Leiter's tabulations are based upon the same data as the Sisk study, which looked at citation counts in articles contained in the Westlaw journals database (as of June of this year) for the 2016-2020 period. Search results were checked for over-counting and rounded.

Here are the lists of most cited faculty by subject area. Note that one reason to list citation counts by subject area is that there is a tremendous disparity in citation counts across fields, reflecting a variety of factors (including what law review editors like to publish). I will update this list as additional subject areas are posted.

• Administrative and/or Environmental Law (I may be on this list.)
• Antitrust Law
• Commercial Law
• Constitutional Law (Conspirators Eugene Volokh, Randy Barnett and William Baude are 6, 10, and 18 respectively.)
• Corporate & Securities Law
• Criminal Law & Procedure (Conspirator Orin Kerr tops this list!)
• Critical Theories of Law
• Election Law
• Evidence
• Family Law
• Health Law
• Immigration Law
• Intellectual Property
• International Law & Security
• Labor and/or Employment Law
• Law & Economics
• Law & Philosophy
• Law & Social Science
• Law & Technology
• Legal History
• Legislation & Statutory Interpretation
• Property (including Wills & Estates)
• Public Law (excluding Constitutional & Election Law) (I make an appearance on this list.)(Leiter decided to withdraw this listing and subdivide this list into more refined categories.)
• Tax Law
• Torts & Insurance Law

In addition to the above posts on Brian Leiter's Law School Reports blog, the Legal Planet environmental law blog has posted a list of the most cited Environmental and Energy Law scholars. Note that this list includes some folks (including myself) who work in multiple areas, which may affect citation counts.

Update: The Originalism blog has posted a list of the most cited Originalism scholars, on which Randy Barnett, Will Baude, Ilya Somin, Keith Whittington, Stephen Sachs, and Josh Blackman are all listed.

Update: Yale Law's Fred Shapiro has also published this study of the most cited legal scholars with a slightly different methodology. It also includes a list of the most-cited legal scholars born in 1970 or later, which includes some familiar names.

(Last update: November 8, 2021)