Talk:Columbia Law School

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[edit] rankings paragraph

The ranking information on the Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, & Yale (and perhaps other) law school pages seems disproportionate and over-emphasized in the early part of the article. Moreover it seems likely to encourage the kinds of disputes among afficionados of one school or the other tweaking endlessly to pull out particular rankings. I think on all these law schools that a general statement of prestigiousness & reference to the admittedly important US News rankings, historically contextualized, is useful. But comparisons b/w the different law schools are too specific for the top portion. I'm proposing to edit it down, but since it seems to be a frequently edited section in some of the articles I'm announcing for discussion here first. (Cross-posting to talk pages for SLS, HLS, YLS, maybe others.) --LQ 20:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jay/Blatchford

Although the page now notes they studied at Columbia prior to the opening of the formal law school, I think their inclusion is still inappropriate, and meant to aggrandize Columbia's alumni list and reputation. It implies the false presumption that had the law school existed, these individuals would have inevitably attended. Moreover, no other major law school alumni list includes law-related figures who studied in their undergraduate colleges prior to the opening of the school. I move to strike these references. Cjs2111 16:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure how aggrandizing it is given that there are lots of other luminaries. (Especially Blatchford. <g>) I think the problem is that law was taught differently at the time, as part of general curricula at some schools and as part of separate law schools at other schools. So I guess the question is, did Jay & Blatchford study somewhere else that could more appropriately "claim" them? If CLS regularly "claims" them as distinguished alums, then I think it would be okay. John Jay, for instance, studied law before any "law schools" existed in the US, according to Law school in the United States list of oldest law schools. (This discussion makes me realize how historically inadequate the current Law school in the United States article is, though.) --lquilter 18:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I've never seen Jay claimed officially as a CLS alumnus...although undergraduate Columbia College, where he actually studied (as did Blatchford), celebrates him as one often. It's true there was a law program at Columbia College prior to the founding of the law school, but it only existed for a brief time in the 1790s, long after Jay was in school, so I doubt he was even able to study law. Cjs2111 18:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] U.S. News & World Report ranking

The article says that CLS is ranked 4th by U.S. News & World Report, but the links given show that it is ranked 5th. What gives? Krakatoa (talk) 05:41, 27 March 2008 (UTC)