Abstract
A potent myth of legal academic scholarship is that it is mostly meritocratic and that it is mostly solitary. Reality is more complicated. In this Article, we plumb the networks of knowledge co-production in legal academia by analyzing the star footnotes that appear at the beginning of most law review articles. Acknowledgements paint a rich picture of both the currency of scholarly credit and the relationships among scholars. Building on others’ prior work characterizing the potent impact of hierarchy, race, and gender in legal academia more generally, we examine the patterns of scholarly networks and probe the effects of those factors. The landscape we illustrate is depressingly unsurprising in basic contours but awash in details. Hierarchy, race, and gender all have substantial impacts on who gets acknowledged and how, what networks of knowledge co-production get formed, and who is helped on their path through the legal academic world.
Disciplines
Law and Economics | Legal Education | Legal Profession | Legal Writing and Research
Date of this Version
1-24-2022
Working Paper Citation
Nunna, Keerthana; Price, W. Nicholson II; and Tietz, Jonathan, "Hierarchy, Race & Gender in Legal Scholarly Networks" (2022). Law & Economics Working Papers. 218.
https://repository.law.umich.edu/law_econ_current/218
Included in
Law and Economics Commons, Legal Education Commons, Legal Profession Commons, Legal Writing and Research Commons