Four years after a bevy of free speech scandals, several revealed in the pages of the Washington Free Beacon, shook the Ivy League school, Yale on Tuesday lost its spot atop the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, which it had occupied for more than 35 years. Stanford is now the top law school, with Yale and the University of Chicago tied for second place. Harvard Law School, meanwhile, ranks number six.
Yale pulled out of the rankings in 2022 after its “peer assessment” score, a key metric in the ratings that reflects a law school’s reputation among academics at other institutions, dropped to its lowest point in over a decade. The peer assessment score was the single largest component in the U.S. News & World Report‘s law school rankings, accounting for 25 percent of the overall rank.
Yale’s decision prompted speculation at the time that the school was about to lose its number one spot. Heather Gerken, then the law school’s dean—she has since left New Haven to lead the left-wing Ford Foundation after being passed over for the university’s presidency—claimed that the rankings were “profoundly flawed” and “disincentivize programs that support public interest careers.”