Berkeley Law’s rankings from Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds place it as the top public law school in the United States, designating it seventh and 10th in the world, respectively.
In November 2022, Berkeley Law announced the institution would no longer participate in U.S. News & World Report’s annual law school rankings. Read Dean Chemerinsky’s note to the law school community outlining the reasons for the decision.
The Los Angeles Times ranked it the top law school in California, and recent studies of scholarly impact also rate the school’s faculty as the best among public institutions.
In addition, preLaw magazine’s field and subject rankings over the past two years give Berkeley Law top marks across a range of disciplines, with an A+ rating for technology, international, criminal, intellectual property, environmental, human rights, and business law. Legal technology (with a No. 1 ranking nationally) and racial justice (No. 6) also garnered an A+ rating. The school earned an A for employment, entertainment, and public policy law as well as social justice.
The latest version of a study by a group of professors at St. Thomas University School of Law that tracks citations as a measure of professors’ influence ranks Berkeley Law’s powerhouse faculty sixth in the country in scholarly impact and the top public school. A separate ranking of the top 100 legal scholars of 2025 by researchers at George Mason University shows Berkeley Law tied for fourth for the number of professors on the list and tied for first among public institutions.
In addition, the legal publication Hein Online’s citation-based analysis ranks Berkeley Law’s faculty eighth in the country and the No. 2 public school. The school’s student-run California Law Review is also ranked seventh for citations.
The Princeton Review also recently ranked the school 10th on its “Best Law Schools for Career Prospects” list.
A broad, deep vein of excellence
Dean Erwin Chemerinsky is the school’s most-cited scholar and ranks second nationally, according to the St. Thomas analysis.
He and six professors were recognized among the most-cited scholars in their fields between 2019 and 2023. Professors Khiara M. Bridges, Daniel A. Farber, Peter S. Menell, Robert P. Merges, Pamela Samuelson, Steven Davidoff Solomon, John Yoo, and Professor Emeritus Ian Haney López round out the most-cited scholars among the faculty.
Chemerinsky, who’s also the top-cited constitutional law professor during that stretch, calls the assortment of strong marks a sign of the school’s impact.
“Rankings are always a reflection of the methodology used,” he says. “But what is stunning is that so many studies, with many different methodologies, rank the Berkeley Law faculty as one of the very best in the country and the world.”
The so-called “Leiter score,” which originated with University of Chicago professor and law blogger Brian Leiter, calculates a faculty’s scholarly impact from the mean and the median of total law journal citations for tenured faculty members over a five-year period. More recently, professors at St. Thomas have taken on updating the rankings every three years.
Berkeley Law ranked sixth in the 2021 edition of that analysis, up from seventh in 2018. The school has hired three dozen full-time professors since 2017, including nine in one year in both 2019 and 2023 and seven in 2025.
They’ve bolstered an already impressive faculty with an infusion of new ideas, scholarly agendas, and methodological chops. More than half hold doctorate degrees in law or another social science.
Leiter used the data compiled by the St. Thomas researchers to create his own list of the most-cited professors in various fields. Here’s who made the list from Berkeley Law:
- Constitutional Law: Chemerinsky, No. 2
- Labor and Employment Law: Catherine Fisk, No. 3
- Law and Social Science (excluding economics): Jonathan Simon, No. 7; Sean Farhang, No. 14
- Law and Technology: Paul Schwartz, No. 9
- Corporate Law & Securities Regulation: Solomon, No. 3
- Legal History: Christopher Tomlins, No. 10 (tie)
Berkeley Law’s faculty also ranked second nationally — and first among public schools — for faculty who publish in the top three peer-reviewed finance journals, including Solomon and Professors Dhammika Dharmapala, Kenneth Ayotte, Ofer Eldar, Frank Partnoy, and Andrew C. Baker.
Another recent analysis of citations for 114 tax law professors with Google Scholar pages lists Professor Alan Auerbach No. 2 and Dharmapala No. 7.
The George Mason researchers based their results on law review articles published in the HeinOnline Law Journal Library between 2019 and 2021. Berkeley Law’s scholars are:
- Sonia Katyal, No. 24
- David Singh Grewal, No. 34
- Solomon, No. 35
- Stavros Gadinis, No. 91
- In HeinOnline’s own analysis, the most-cited list overall includes:
- Chemerinsky, No. 12
- Farber, No. 21
- Samuelson, No. 42
- Yoo, No. 92
- Professor Emeritus Melvin Eisenberg, No. 96
By subject, the list includes:
- Administrative Law: Farber, No. 53; Kenneth Bamberger, No. 64
- Business and Corporations: Eisenberg, No. 29; Solomon, No. 51; Farber, No. 71
- Constitutional Law: Chemerinsky, No. 8; Yoo, No. 43, Farber, No. 44
- Contracts: Eisenberg, No. 4; Merges, No. 62; Chemerinsky, No. 76; Hanoch Dagan, No. 78
- Courts and Jurisprudence: Simon, No. 33; Osagie K. Obasogie, No. 40; Leti Volpp, No. 50; Malcolm Feeley, No. 58
- Criminal Law and Justice: Chemerinsky, No. 59
- Economics and Taxation: Eisenberg, No. 46; Solomon, No. 47; Partnoy, No. 70; Gadinis, No. 88
- Education: Chemerinsky, No. 14; Bridges, No. 29; Farber, No. 90
- Environmental Law: Farber, No. 9; Holly Doremus, No. 24; Eric Biber, No. 32; William Fletcher, No. 95
- Estates and Trusts: Professor Emeritus Marjorie Shultz, No. 42; Biber, No. 98
- Evidence: Andrea Roth, No. 46
- Food and Drug Law: Merges, No. 7; Chemerinsky, No. 25; Roth, No. 29; Sharon Jacobs, No. 31; Andrew Bradt, No. 40; Aaron Edlin, No. 63; Fletcher, No. 80
- Government: Chemerinsky, No. 8; Farber, No. 29; Yoo, No. 49
- Health: Bridges, No. 11; Chemerinsky, No. 45; Merges, No. 89
- Human Rights Law: Volpp, No. 13; Schwartz, No. 69
- Immigration Law: Volpp, No. 11; Ayelet Shachar, No. 49
- Insurance Law: Meir Dan-Cohen, No. 9; Farhang, No. 58; Bridges, No. 72
- International and Comparative:Yoo, No. 10; Grewal, No. 18; Volpp, No. 50
- Labor Law and Employment: Fisk, No. 8; Grewal, No. 14; Kathryn Abrams, No. 77
- Law, Science, and Technology: Samuelson, No. 5; Schwartz, No. 10; Menell, No. 52; Katyal, No. 65; Merges, No. 76
- Legal Education and Practice: Farber, No. 28; Chemerinsky, No. 63; Eisenberg, No. 66; Grewal, No. 69; Abrams, No. 75
- Legal History: Farber, No. 65; Chemerinsky, No. 82
- Property: Samuelson, No. 2; Merges, No. 5; Menell, No. 23; Katyal, No. 26; Colleen V. Chien, No. 53; Dagan, No. 88
- Social Justice and Public Interest: Bridges, No. 17; Abrams, No. 24; Volpp, No. 82
- Torts: Eisenberg, No. 63; Chemerinsky, No. 85
By Gwyneth K. Shaw