Key (sometimes underappreciated) 2020 election dates

April 1, 2020: Census Day, the date on which everyone reports where they live (which will be compiled and submitted to Congress in late 2020) for purposes of reapportionment of members of the House of Representatives, among other purposes.

May 11, 2020: That’s the deadline for independent presidential candidates to file nominating petitions in Texas. Petitioners must secure 89,693 signatures, and signature gathering may begin March 3. In the event a candidate outside the established parties wants to secure a nationwide candidacy, this is among the earliest deadlines (North Carolina recently moved up its deadline to March, and in July 2020 the Fourth Circuit approved that move).

July 20, 2020: This is six months before Inauguration Day (January 20, 2021), and the deadline for the National Popular Vote Compact to take effect in the 2020 presidential election. If 270 electoral votes’ worth of states have signed up by this date, the Compact takes effect; otherwise, sign-ons will be for later presidential elections.

November 3, 2020: Election Day for President and Vice President, and Election Day for members of Congress.

December 8, 2020: The date for states to make a “conclusive” determination, in the eyes of Congress, “of any controversy or contest concerning the appointment of” presidential electors.

December 14, 2020: The date presidential electors convene in each state and the District of Columbia to formally vote for the next President and Vice President of the United States

January 3, 2021: The date the new term of members of Congress begins.

January 6, 2021: The presumptive meeting of Congress to count electoral votes for president, resolve any disputes, and choose a candidate in the event of a tie or of no candidate receiving a majority.

January 20, 2021: Inauguration Day for the next term for the offices of President and Vice President.

Can states thwart the National Popular Vote Compact by refusing to disclose their popular vote totals?

I’ve been deeply critical of the National Popular Vote Compact (“NPV”) (for a taste of some reasons, see here). In brief, instead of states choosing the winning slate of presidential electors based on the winner of each state’s popular vote, compacting states (consisting of at least a majority of the Electoral College) agree to choose the winning slate of presidential electors based on the winner of the national popular vote.

But there’s a new effort out that attempts to thwart the NPV if the NPV ever goes into effect—by refusing to disclose some statewide popular vote totals.

Legislators in New Hampshire and South Dakota have introduced bills that would keep the state’s popular vote totals a secret until after the Electoral College meets. That, in theory, would thwart the ability to add up a “national popular vote” total.

But I’m not so sure this will work.

The NPV instructs each member state to total "the number of votes for each presidential slate in each state . . . in which votes have been cast in a statewide popular election"; and "'statewide popular election' shall mean a general election in which votes are cast for presidential slates by individual voters and counted on a statewide basis." It also provides, “The chief election official of each member state shall treat as conclusive an official statement containing the number of popular votes in a state for each presidential slate made by the day established by federal law for making a state’s final determination conclusive as to the counting of electoral votes by Congress.” (Right now, that’s six days before the Electoral College meets.)

That means that if, say, Colorado in 1876 doesn't hold a popular election, there are no popular votes added from the state of Colorado to add. So the Compact counts up the popular votes in as many or as few states as hold elections.

So what if New Hampshire or South Dakota, or some other state, withholds its votes from other states to review? My guess is that there’s no “official statement” of the “popular vote” to treat as “conclusive,” which places no obligation on member states to count those votes in a national popular vote. Alternatively, the compact might be construed to say that there are no “votes . . . counted on a statewide basis” in the event the state chooses not to disclose them prior to the meeting of the electors (technically, of course, they’d be counted secretly, but the implication from the NPV, I think, is that counted and publicly ascertainable is what matters, as other provisions of the NPV suggest).

If that’s the case, New Hampshire or South Dakota wouldn’t be thwarting the NPV. They’d simply be excluded from the “national popular vote” total, as if the legislature chose the electors directly.

Perhaps I’m wrong, and the better interpretation of the NPV is that if a state holds a popular election but refuses to publcly disclose its votes, it would prevent any state from recognizing a “national popular vote” total. But despite my opposition to the NPV for both legal and practical reasons, I’m skeptical this gambit would work.

Some questions about mashups of law school rankings

Each year, the Princeton Review surveys law students around the country and uses those surveys to create eleven rankings lists. (Three other lists are based on school-reported data.) The data includes factors like “Best Classroom Experience” and “Most Competitive Students.” I’ve previously noted that I think these surveys are pretty good because they are designed not to be “comprehensive” but rate schools in different categories, even if a fairly black box methodology.

One oft-shared survey among law professors is “Best Professors.” That ranking, according to the Princeton Review, is “Based on student answers to survey questions concerning how good their professors are as teachers and how accessible they are outside the classroom.” Here’s the “top 10” as reported by the Princeton Review for 2020:

1. University of Virginia

2. Duke University

3. University of Chicago

4. Washington & Lee University

5. Stanford University

6. University of Notre Dame

7. Boston College

8. Boston University

9. University of Michigan

10. Northwestern University

Dean Paul Caron over at TaxProf approaches it somewhat differently. He takes two of the Princeton Review categories, “Professors: Interesting” (based on a student survey of “the quality of teaching”), and “Professors: Accessible” (based on a student survey of “the accessibility of law faculty members”), which Princeton Review rates on a scale of 60 to 99. It yields a different top 10:

1. University of Virginia

2. University of Alabama

University of Chicago

Duke University

Pepperdine University

Stanford University

Washington & Lee University

8. Charleston

Notre Dame

Regent

Vanderbilt

It’s an interesting comparison—ostensibly, the “Best Professors” rating is based on how good the professors are as teachers (i.e., quality), and accessibility. But mashing up two sets of categories from Princeton Review on similar topics yields different results: Alabama, Pepperdine, Charleston, Regent, and Vanderbilt go from “unranked” to the “top 10” of Dean Caron’s mashup rankings; Boston College, Boston University, the University of Michigan, and Northwestern University drop out of the “top 10.” What’s different about the Princeton Review’s judgment of “Best Professors” than simply a mashup of two categories?

Dean Caron goes on to create a new “overall law school ranking,” with “equal weight” to five categories: (1) selectivity in admissions, (2) academic experience, (3) professor teaching quality, (4) professor accessibility, and (5) career rating. His rankings give 20% weight to each of the five categories noted above.

(Princeton Review actually disclaims doing this with its information:)

Note: we don't have a "Best Overall Academics" ranking list nor do we rank the law schools 1 to 167 on a single list because we believe each of the schools offers outstanding academics. We believe that hierarchical ranking lists that focus solely on academics offer very little value to students and only add to the stress of applying to law school.

So this raises a new question: are these five categories of equal value to prospective students? Specifically, is "faculty accessibility” worth equal parts with “career rating”—that is, “the confidence students have in their school's ability to lead them to fruitful employment opportunities, as well as the school's own record of having done so”? I’m not terribly convinced these are of equal value.

For the Princeton Review, “career rating” actually includes several judgments compiled into a single index—practical experience, externship opportunities, student perceptions of preparedness, graduate salaries, bar passage-required jobs, and bar passage rates, all lumped into one 60-99 score.

Any ranking that takes multiple components into a single result requires value judgments about how to weigh those components. USNWR ranking, for instance, places about 22% of the overall score on career and bar outcomes. Above the Law puts all of its metrics on outcomes, mostly employment-related outcomes.

Of course, I bracket all this to say that I of course do not suggest that professor accessibility is unimportant. (If you’ve ever seen me at one of the four law schools I’ve taught at, you’ll see I’m physically in the building a lot—I value accessibility and making myself accessible tremendously!) But whether it’s of equal importance is something more puzzling for me. It’s valuable to students—how valuable? How valuable compared to other things?

Professor Paul Gowder suggested that perhaps it’s valuable to have measures that are not simply highly correlated with one another, as so many rankings metrics tend to be, such that the rankings can truly measure lots of different things. It’s a fair point, and one to consider: faculty accessibility is negatively correlated (-0.12 by this measure) with career outcomes. Of course, as I ran these figures, this also seems a bit strange (in my view)—I might think that better faculty access (including mentoring!) would lead to better career counseling outcomes and better bar passage rates. Additionally, Professor Rob Anderson noted that there may be questions about how we define “faculty accessibility” and whether some faculty (like professors with childcare responsibilities) are disproportionately affected.

Other Princeton Review measures are more highly correlated with career outcomes, like “teaching quality (0.36) and “academic experience (0.56). Of course, least surprising is that “admissions selectivity” (0.71) is the most highly correlated with best career outcomes.

All this is to say, I appreciate when folks lpress forward with alternative measures of evaluating law schools and comparing law schools to one another. Personally, I think we don’t we spend enough time evaluating a lot of important things about law schools, and I’ve tried to put some of them here on this blog: debt-to-income ratios, median debt loads, optimal employment outcomes, the role of school-funded jobs, and so on.

Each measure, though, like the Princeton Review rankings, is hard to compare to one another without making judgments about how to weigh them. Maybe we should weigh a series of factors equally; maybe there are reasons not to. And I confess I have far more questions than answers! But it’s also a reason to wonder whether “comprehensive” or mashup rankings are as valuable as a series of discrete evaluation categories that offers opportunities for students to assess how valuable individual components are.

Recanvassing rules for the Iowa Democratic Party and the Iowa caucuses

While the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez, recently called for the Iowa Democratic Party to recanvass the results of the caucus. He can’t do that, nor do existing rules allow it. But there are ways to recanvass.

Rule 2 of the Delegate Selection Rules for the Democratic National Convention provides,

K. While parties are encouraged to use government-run primaries, in states where the State Party chooses to hold a Party-run process to establish presidential preference, the State Party’s Delegate Selection Plan shall prevent attempts at voter suppression, disenfranchisement, and ensure an open and inclusive process. Further, the Rules and Bylaws Committee shall determine whether the State Party’s Delegate Selection Plan meets the requirements specified in this section, including:

…

6. Ensuring final expressions of preference as part of the presidential nominating process are securely preserved, in a method to be specified in the State's Plan, that ensures the availability of a prompt and accurate recount or recanvas;

7. Providing a standard and procedure by which a presidential candidate may request a recount or recanvas that is paid for by the candidate and carried out in a timely manner;

The Iowa Democratic Party established the following recanvas rules for 2020:

8. Any presidential candidate may request a precinct-levelreview of caucus results by submitting a request in writing to the Iowa Democratic Party Chair.

a. Requests for precinct-level review must include the name of the county or counties, the precinct(s), and a credible explanation describing the reason for the request.

b. Requests for precinct-level review must be received by the Chair no later than Friday, February 7, 2020, at 12:00 p.m.

c. The State Party will respond to a request for precinct-level review within 48 hours of receipt. The response will include an anticipated timeline for the review and an estimate of fees to be assessed to the campaign in order to complete the review.

9. Any presidential candidate may request a recanvas of district or state results by submitting a request in writing to the Iowa Democratic Party Chair.

a. Requests for recanvas must include the scope of the desired recanvas, a thorough description of the challenge, and an explanation about how the national delegation could be altered as a result of the problem or its correction.

b. Requests for recanvas must be received by the Chair no later than Friday, February 7, 2020, at 12:00 p.m.

10. The State Central Committee will certify caucus results no later than February 29, 2020.

In short, while the National Committee might examine challenges to the Iowa caucuses at the convention, the formal recanvassing process occurs when a candidate asks for a recanvassing, by Friday, February 7, at 12 pm. I assume, of course, some candidate will take Mr. Perez’s public statement to heart and make the request, but we shall see. (UPDATE: That deadline was extended.)

More transparency in Iowa caucuses leads to more complexity

The 2016 Democratic caucuses in Iowa were close, hotly contested, and left supporters of candidate Bernie Sanders frustrated. The caucuses operated as usual—voters show up at a variety of sites around the state, herd into corners of rooms to express their first preference of candidates, realign if their candidates are “non-viable,” and then that final alignment is translated into “state delegate equivalents,” which turn into the way of measuring “victory” from the caucuses. Only those delegate equivalent totals were reported. Questions arose about what happened in those earlier stages of the process.

Reform efforts looked at increasing transparency. “First alignment,” “final alignment,” and “state delegate equivalents” would all be reported.

Of course, increased disclosure means increased complexity in reporting results (related, in part, to the “app” fiasco). And increased disclosure also means increased opportunities to look back at consistency.

It turns out that there have been extensive inconsistencies in how some of the results have been reported.

Truth be told, such inconsistencies probably happen each year. Herd hundreds of people into a gymnasium, line them up in corners, and ask volunteers to count them? Probably some errors are going to happen.

For the most part, these errors are assuredly (1) innocent (e.g., due to incompetence, not malice); (2) randomly distributed (i.e., not likely to systematically favor one candidate over another); and (3) less important if the “state delegate equivalents” are the right result even if other inaccuracies exist.

For instance, suppose a candidate is listed as having 40 supporters (20% of those present) in the “first alignment” but only 39 supporters (19.5% of those present) in the “final alignment,” when present (new) rules forbid “realigning” if your candidate is “viable” (i.e., has at least 15% support) in the first alignment? If the error is in the tabulation of the “first alignment,” it doesn’t actually matter when it comes to the final alignment that translates into the state delegate equivalents.

In previous years, we’d never find that error. But that error is also immaterial to the result. Granted, it exposes this year that the math was not precise, or that there were some errors at some stages of the process, or that volunteer caucus workers were not as careful as they ought to have been—and one can draw preferred inferences from those new details.

All this is to say, the fuzziness of the caucus results worked in previous years because these errors were never disclosed publicly, likely were randomly distributed, and at least sometimes never altered the ultimate results. But more transparency leads to more complexity. And more complexity leads to more highlights of errors or inconsistencies. Ironically, perhaps, the increased transparency has undermined confidence in the results.

Time will tell whether this means changes for the Iowa caucuses. But these are simply my initial thoughts that transparency may yield complexity, which creates its own challenges.

The Iowa caucuses and political party leverage

The 2020 Democratic caucuses in Iowa ended with uncertainty, as an unvetted closed-source app from an undisclosed developer for reporting results was canned the night of the caucuses, and as some “inconsistencies” led to delayed reporting results. Already, obituaries for the Iowa caucuses are being written—even for the Republican caucuses, which were largely uncontested last night and have less of the dynamism and “realignment” of the Democratic caucuses.

As someone about to embark to the University of Iowa College of Law to teach election, I think about the Iowa caucuses a lot these days. And two common questions arise: why Iowa, and why caucuses? One shortcut answer is tradition—Iowa benefited from a first mover advantage after the disruption of the presidential selection process in the 1960s, and one can easily find plenty written on it.

But another answer is more complicated. Iowa benefits because the Democratic and Republican parties allow it to benefit—or, at least, have been unwilling to challenge the existing structure that has allowed it to benefit.

The Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee develop private sets of rules to decide how the party will choose its presidential nominee. It awards each state (and territory) a certain number of delegates to attend a presidential nominating convention. Those delegates must be chosen in each state pursuant to specific rules. And those rules are extensive.

Consider the Democratic Party rules. It includes timing, which includes Rule 12(a):

No meetings, caucuses, conventions or primaries which constitute the first determining stage in the presidential nomination process (the date of the primary in primary states, and the date of the first tier caucus in caucus states) may be held prior to the first Tuesday in March or after the second Tuesday in June in the calendar year of the national convention. Provided, however, that the Iowa precinct caucuses may be held no earlier than 29days before the first Tuesday in March;that the New Hampshire primary may be held no earlier than 21days before the first Tuesday in March; that the Nevada first-tier caucuses may be held no earlier than 10days before the first Tuesday in March; and that the South Carolina primary may be held no earlier than 3days before the first Tuesday in March.

These rules specifically privilege Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.

On top of this is New Hampshire, which has a statute that requires that its presidential preference primary happen before all other preference primaries. Because Iowa holds caucuses, it doesn’t run afoul of New Hampshire’s statute.

So why a caucus? Well, in part, (1) party rules privilege the Iowa caucuses in particular, and (2) caucuses allow it to precede New Hampshire.

Now, after last night, there will be deep soul searching in the Democratic Party (and, I think, the Republican Party) about whether such caucuses should remain. It would require not just to adjust Iowa, but to think about how New Hampshire and other states might react.

It has been deeply difficult for parties to get out of the traditional path-dependent practices of previous years. But this is a moment of leverage—never let a serious crisis go to waste.

And it’s worth reflecting on the leverage exerted by the Democratic Party in 2008. Then, Michigan and Florida attempted to defy party rules by holding early primaries. The Democratic Party rule said that delegates selected in this process would receive zero weight at the nominating convention. Very late in the process, they negotiated a half weighted process. Once Barack Obama was the apparent nominee despite losing Michigan and Florida, they were given full weight.

So, Michigan and Florida bucked the party’s rules—and, I think, in many sense, lost, only to “win” when it no longer mattered. And neither has attempted to buck party rules since.

I wonder if rules changes ahead of 2024 have this moment of leverage for the parties in the face of tradition or existing state rules. Maybe. There are many moving parties and vested interests, so time will tell how the aftermath of Iowa shakes out. But it will, I think, be primarily driven by a strong party desire and a strong willingness to adhere to whatever codification of that desire occurs. Whether that happens is an open question.

Federal judicial clerks can be registered members of the Republican or Democratic Party, but not the Federalist Society or the American Constitution Society

That’s from a recent—and, in my view, hard to reconcile—interpretation from the Committee on Codes of Conduct in a recent guide to judiciary policy draft.

For a little background, see this Bloomberg piece; for a little commentary, see pieces by Gail Heriot, Josh Hammer, and Mark Pulliam.

I want to focus less on what judges may or may not do, and more about how the principles extend to their law clerks:

As we discussed in Advisory Opinion 116, the relevant portions of the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees, although not identical to the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, lead to similar conclusions on issues regarding outside activities, particularly for law clerks and staff attorneys. As we have noted, law clerks are perceived by the public as members of a judge’s staff. Although we have not addressed the issue as frequently, the advice we have given law clerks on involvement in outside activities, particularly law-related activities, is consistent with the advice we give here. Accordingly, we also conclude that law clerk and staff attorney membership in the ACS or the Federalist Society is inconsistent with the Code of Conduct for Judicial Employees

Impermissible “law-related” activities are discussed in AO 116: “judicial participation in organizations that advocate particular causes rather than the general improvement of the law is prohibited.” That concern in particular arises when the activity “is generally viewed by the public as having adopted a consistent political or ideological point of view equivalent to the type of partisanship often found in political organizations.”

But there is a separate provision for “political activities,” in Canon 5. Covered employees (including judicial clerks) “may,” for instance, “register and vote in any primary or general election, including register as a member of a political party” (Advisory Op. 92, I.a, emphasis added), and “participate in caucuses in those states where caucuses substitute for primary elections” (Id., II.c.).

A judicial clerk, then, could, under existing advisory opinions, be a “member” of the Republican or Democratic Party. Indeed, a law clerk could attended the Iowa presidential caucuses next month and stand in a corner of the room to cast a vote for Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. (But, under the rules, they “may not . . . attempt[] to influence other voters”).

Admittedly, one might distinguish law-related organizations that are “generally viewed” as political from other law-related organizations. But it is hard to endorse membership in some overtly political organizations like political parties but prohibit membership in organizations that are not overtly political.

Then again, when the right to vote is at stake—as it would be in states with closed primaries (i.e., requiring membership in a party) or caucuses (with public appearances at party events)—perhaps the Committee is willing to be more flexible.

I don’t know what will arise from the draft, and maybe others think the distinctions are more important than I do. But it was unusual enough to highlight.

ICWA and me

Our family became foster parents in 2018 to a little girl (for privacy, I’ll call her Alice) who, at the time, was about to turn 2 years of age.

She’s nearly 3 and a half.

She’s still not adopted, despite our desire to adopt her.

It’s in no small part because of ICWA.

*

When a state terminates parental rights, several things must happen, including a number of prior hearings and notices given. One such notice involves the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a federal statute that places obligations on state government officials and state courts in child custody disputes if there is reason to believe the child may be of tribal descent.

Alice was born in late 2016 at 26 weeks and lived in the hospital for several months. I won’t chronicle her health troubles or complications here, except to note they were (and are) extensive.

Shortly after birth, the biological mother represented that there was Indian ancestry on her mother’s side, naming a small tribe. That triggered ICWA obligations on county officials to investigate and file notice with the tribe. If the tribe doesn’t respond after sufficient notice, the hearing proceeds.

The notice included some information about the mother’s ancestors, but not some other information. The tribe never responded to the notice.

This all predated our involvement in Alice’s life. She came into our home in 2018. In early 2019, parental rights were terminated. The parents appealed.

And on appeal (after a lengthy briefing process that took the better part of a year), the state court concluded that the county failed to comply with ICWA’s notice requirements (and with California’s requirements implementing ICWA). The case was sent back for further proceedings. Notice was re-issued. Hearings remain pending. Further appeals remain possible.

The county’s investigations have been challenging for a variety of reasons—the biological family’s ancestors were resistant to disclosing information. There was never evidence of tribal enrollment of any ancestral family member. It’s not clear that the investigation led to much additional information to notice the tribe.

My own (entirely amateur) research revealed that this particular tribe only enrolls members who were born to enrolled members and born on tribal reservation lands—Alice meets neither condition.

But ICWA requires county officials to investigate and provide notice so that the court can assess whether it is in the best interest of the child to be adopted in a tribal family or outside of it.

*

Intellectually, I understand ICWA. Given some dubious historical behavior surrounding some adoptions of children from tribal lands, providing additional guarantees to tribal relatives in adoption proceedings undoubtedly does great good for many children who would otherwise be separated from relatives and from their cultural heritage.

But in our case, like those of others, it is a deeply frustrating encounter, one that we wait patiently to navigate through.

Alice has been in state care since her birth. Ideally, disputes like hers are resolved before she turns 2 to provide her stability and security. It’s not clear that her case will be resolved before she’s 4.

From health care to child care, we navigate deep administrative challenges as a family each day that Alice is not legally adopted.

I write this not because I have strong thoughts on the litigation in Brackeen v. Bernhardt, the case makes its way through the Fifth Circuit on the constitutionality of ICWA. (It is interesting, however, how the case is characterized for certain constitutional issues, sometimes in ways that I don’t consider entirely accurate now that I’ve actually experienced it.)

Instead, I write it as someone witnessing the law in a decidedly non-lawyer-ly role of a foster parent. Despite being a licensed attorney and a teacher of law, I am pretty much an observer in this process, as things are largely outside our control.

ICWA as a statute—regardless of its constitutionality—is, I think, sadly not working as intended. I’m far from an expert in this area (again, a reason I’m not inclined to weigh in the constitutional issues in dispute). But simply directly experiencing the operation of a law like this offers me the small insight that there must be better ways—rules that can be better tailored to advance the best interests of children and Indian tribes, and rules that give children like Alice speedier placement into safe homes. Maybe those happen through improved administration and education (including improving counties’ abilities to more easily comply, or streamlining the notice process through tribes). Maybe they happen through Congress updating laws. I’m not sure. I can only experience some of the frustration and wait it out.

I have only seen a small piece of what the foster system looks like, and an even smaller piece of how Indian tribes are affected by the foster system. But I’m increasingly aware of how laws might affect children like Alice, and my awareness comes from this unique exposure in a non-legal setting.

I’ve assuredly had my eyes opened in other ways looking at our legal system as a relative outsider in the fostering process. And maybe I’ll write more about it in the years ahead.

Despite stable enrollment, law schools continue to shed full-time faculty

Overall law school enrollment has improved slightly over the last few years, and a huge influx of non-JD enrollment continues.

Nevertheless, ABA data reveals that law schools continue to shrink—at least, when it comes to full-time faculty.

Law schools dropped from 10,226 full-time faculty (this figure includes all full-time positions, regardless of faculty status) in 2017 to 9470 in 2019, a 7% decline in two years. Law schools are doing more with less. Indeed, they’re not being replaced with adjuncts or temporary faculty—non-full-time faculty also declined (albeit at a smaller rate) in this period, too (from about 17,000 to about 16,500).

It might be, of course, that some of this attrition is simply phased retirements finally panning out, or ordinary departures that aren’t being refilled. But it’s also a sign that law schools are being cautious—and that despite enrollment improvements, that hasn’t translated into revenue improvements (e.g., increased scholarship spending to attract a similar student profile).

Three schools (Arizona Summit, Valparaiso, and Whittier) shut down in this period, totaling about 83 faculty in that time frame (some, however, did lateral to other law schools). Nevertheless, 44 law schools saw faculty declines of at least 15% in that time period.

Name	2017	2019	Change
Florida Coastal	39	13	-66.7%
Vermont	59	37	-37.3%
Thomas Jefferson	41	27	-34.1%
Liberty	27	19	-29.6%
Touro	44	31	-29.5%
William & Mary	64	46	-28.1%
Buffalo	61	45	-26.2%
Regent	27	20	-25.9%
Louisville	36	27	-25.0%
Arkansas	49	37	-24.5%
Oklahoma City	29	22	-24.1%
Western New England	29	22	-24.1%
Samford	25	19	-24.0%
Berkeley	103	79	-23.3%
Denver	85	66	-22.4%
American	94	73	-22.3%
Catholic	37	29	-21.6%
Widener-Delaware	33	26	-21.2%
Detroit Mercy	30	24	-20.0%
Nova Southeastern	56	45	-19.6%
Faulkner	26	21	-19.2%
DePaul	47	38	-19.1%
Akron	32	26	-18.8%
Concordia	16	13	-18.8%
New Mexico	48	39	-18.8%
Northern Kentucky	32	26	-18.8%
West Virginia	43	35	-18.6%
Creighton	33	27	-18.2%
Davis	51	42	-17.6%
North Carolina	68	56	-17.6%
Case Western Reserve	46	38	-17.4%
Seattle	59	49	-16.9%
North Carolina Central	36	30	-16.7%
Chicago-Kent	67	56	-16.4%
Texas Tech	43	36	-16.3%
Chapman	50	42	-16.0%
Ohio State	64	54	-15.6%
Southern Illinois	32	27	-15.6%
University of Washington	64	54	-15.6%
Charleston	26	22	-15.4%
Pepperdine	52	44	-15.4%
St. Louis	52	44	-15.4%
Mitchell|Hamline	46	39	-15.2%
San Diego	60	51	-15.0%

It’s not all bad news, however. 14 law schools (especially a few recently-founded schools) saw hiring upticks of at least 10%.

Name	2017	2019	Change
Lincoln Memorial	14	19	35.7%
UNT Dallas	16	21	31.3%
UNLV	42	55	31.0%
CUNY	51	64	25.5%
Appalachian	10	12	20.0%
La Verne	21	25	19.0%
George Mason	44	52	18.2%
Campbell	26	30	15.4%
Irvine	50	57	14.0%
Oklahoma	37	42	13.5%
Roger Williams	23	26	13.0%
Arkansas-Little Rock	25	28	12.0%
Penn State Law	42	47	11.9%
Howard	35	39	11.4%