Yale Law School
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The Sterling law buildings |
Yale Law School, or
YLS, is the
law school of
Yale University in
New Haven, Connecticut. Established in
1843, the school offers the
J.D.,
LL.M.,
M.S.L., and
J.S.D. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars and several legal research centers.
The institution has been ranked the best law school in the United States by
U.S. News & World Report since the magazine began ranking them in 1987. [
1] Former President
William Howard Taft was a professor of
constitutional law there from
1913 until he resigned to become
Chief Justice of the United States in
1921.
Yale Law School's classes (in this context meaning the admitted students who enroll in a year-group) are relatively small, at approximately 180 students, and its 7.5-student-to-faculty ratio is the lowest of all U.S. law schools. Its small class size and high prestige combine to make its admissions process highly selective — numerically speaking, it is the most difficult law school to gain entry to in the U.S. More of its admitted students decide to attend (i.e.
yield) than those of high-prestige rivals
Stanford and
Harvard. A high
GPA, high
LSAT score, and very strong non-quantitative credentials are near-prerequisites to admission. 50% of the class that entered in 2005 had a GPA above 3.87 (out of 4.0) and an LSAT score above 171 (out of 180 possible points)or 99th percentile. [
2]
The institution is known for its scholarly orientation; a relatively large number of its graduates (4%) choose careers in academia. Yale's curriculum is generally less focused on corporate and commercial law than that of other leading schools, such as
Columbia,
Harvard and
Stanford. Some 38% of its graduates take
judicial clerkships, more than any other school's.
Yale Law School does not have a traditional grading system, a consequence of student unrest in the late
1960s. Instead, it grades first-semester first-year students on a simple Credit/No Credit system. For their remaining two and a half years, students are graded on an Honors/Pass/Low Pass/Fail system. Similarly, the school does not rank its students. It is also notable for having only a single semester of required classes, instead of the full year most U.S. schools require.
In recent years, some students have called for the school to make diversity a higher priority when hiring faculty. The school has one tenured female professor of color and no Hispanic professors.
Students publish nine
law journals that, unlike those at most other schools, accept student editors without a competition. The only exception is YLS's flagship journal,
The Yale Law Journal, which holds an admissions competition each spring.
The YLS
law library, Lillian Goldman Law Library, contains around 800,000 volumes. The school's classrooms were redesigned in 1998 as part of a larger renovation begun in 1995.
*
Bruce Ackerman, constitutional and political science scholar and op-ed writer
*
Akhil Amar, constitutional scholar, prolific writer and consultant to the television show
The West Wing*
Ian Ayres, author of
Why Not? and frequent commentator on
NPR's
Marketplace program
*
Jack Balkin, First Amendment scholar and legal blogger
*
Yochai Benkler, author of
The Wealth of Networks*
Guido Calabresi, judge on the
United States Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit and former dean of the law school
*
Amy Chua, author of New York Times bestseller:
World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability*
Drew S. Days, III, former
United States Solicitor General*
Owen M. Fiss, liberalism and free speech scholar
*
Harold Hongju Koh,
dean of the law school (2004- ) and former
Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the Clinton administration (1998-2004)
*
Jonathan R. Macey, corporate/banking law scholar
*
Ralph Winter, senior circuit judge and former chief judge,
United States Court of Appeals for the
Second Circuit*
Samuel Alito (J.D. 1975), 110th U.S. Supreme Court justice (2006-present)
*
John R. Bolton (J.D. 1974), current
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations*
Cory Booker (J.D. 1997), mayor of
Newark, New Jersey*
Karl Carstens (LL.M. 1949), 5th president of the
Federal Republic of Germany (1979-1984)
*
Bill Clinton (J.D. 1973), 42nd U.S. President (1993-2000)
*
Hillary Rodham Clinton (J.D. 1973), U.S. Senator (D-
New York)
*
Alan Dershowitz (J.D. 1962), Harvard Law professor and author
*
Gerald Ford (LL.B. 1941), 38th U.S. President (1974-1976)
*
Paul Helmke (J.D. 1973), Fort Wayne mayor 1987-1999, U.S. Conference of Mayors President 1997-98, Brady Campaign against Gun Violence President 2006-
*
Henry T. King, Jr., (LL.B 1943), Nuremberg prosecutor 1946-1947.
*
Joseph Lieberman (J.D. 1967), U.S. Senator (D-
Connecticut) and 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee
*
Robert M. Morgenthau (LL.B. 1948), district attorney for New York County
*
Pat Robertson (LL.B. 1955),
televangelist *
Arlen Specter (LL.B. 1956), U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman (R-
Pennsylvania)
*
Ben Stein: actor and speechwriter for President
Richard Nixon*
William Howard Taft (LL.D. 1893), 27th
President of the United States, 10th
Chief Justice of the United States*
Clarence Thomas (J.D. 1974), 106th U.S. Supreme Court justice (1991-present)
*
Nicholas Katzenbach (LL.B 1947), U.S. Attorney General under President
Lyndon B. Johnson*
Yale University*
Elihu Yale*
List of Yale University people (
Yalies)
*
Yale School of Management*
Yale School of Medicine*
Yale Law School*
The Yale Law Journal*
The Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, & Ethics*
The Yale Journal of International Law*
The Yale Journal of Law and Feminism*
Yale Law and Policy Review*
The Yale Law School Rebellious Lawyering Conference
