The Evolving Network of Legal Scholars

51 Pages Posted: 26 Apr 2021 Last revised: 7 Jun 2022

See all articles by Andrew T. Hayashi

Andrew T. Hayashi

University of Virginia School of Law

Date Written: June 7, 2022

Abstract

The law professoriate is a network connected by scholarly interactions of various kinds, including co-authorship. I study the evolution of the co-authorship network from 1980-2020 and document a sharp increase in the number of scholars, the amount of scholarship, and explosive growth in the network of legal scholars during this period. Despite this growth, however, the distance between legal scholars has shrunk such that legal academia can be characterized as a “small world.” I describe the increase in the number and scholarly contributions of women, minorities, and lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) scholars and the rise of co-authorship, including “mixed” co-authorship. I find that members of the same gender or minority groups tend to coauthor with each other, but that this correlation has declined over time resulting in more co-authorship across identity categories. Finally, examining the ordering of author names on coauthored articles, I find that racial minority scholars make up a greater share of first authors than their share of authors in general, while women and LGB scholars make up a smaller share of first authors than one might expect if authorship were randomly assigned.

Keywords: legal academia, knowledge production, coauthorship, networks

JEL Classification: K00, Z1

Suggested Citation

Hayashi, Andrew T., The Evolving Network of Legal Scholars (June 7, 2022). Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2021-25, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2021-12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3833993

Andrew T. Hayashi (Contact Author)

University of Virginia School of Law ( email )

580 Massie Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
United States

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