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11 Va. J.L. & Tech. 1 (2006)

handle is hein.journals/vjolt11 and id is 1 raw text is: VIRGINIA JOURNAL OF LAW & TECHNOLOGY WINTER 2006 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA VOL. 11, No. 1 The Relative Value of American Law Reviews: A Critical Appraisal of Ranking Methods DR. RONEN PERRY ABSTRACT Ranking law reviews is not a novel initiative. Data regarding the relative value of legal periodicals was first published in 1930, in an article primarily concerned with the overall contribution of legal periodicals to the development of positive law. Since then many attempts have been made to rank American law reviews by various criteria. This Article, however, focuses not on actual rankings but on ranking theory and methodology. It offers an introductory discussion of the goals of law review rating, and the essential attributes of reliable and beneficial ranking methods, followed by a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the advantages and shortcomings of the various methods that can be used to assess the relative value of American law reviews. The Article rejects direct evaluation of quality, either by an expert committee or a general survey, and indirect evaluation of quality by authors' national prominence, article rejection rates, editors' academic aptitudes, and library or database usage. It then explains that if properly adjusted and carefully administered, citation-based methods might afford quantitative measures of various aspects of academic quality. Finally, the Article discusses the weaknesses of complex ranking methods in which several indicia of quality are taken into account. C 2006 Virginia Journal of Law & Technology Association, http://w,ww.v.jolt.net. Use paragraph numbers for pinpoint citations. T Faculty of Law, University of Haifa; LL.D. summa cum laude (Hebrew University, 2000), LL.M. studies completed with distinction (Hebrew University, 1997), LL.B. magna cum laude (Tel Aviv University, 1996). I am grateful to Guy Davidov, Ron Harris, Yoram Shachar, and Jonathan Yovel for their helpful comments.

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