Top 20 [sic] Most-Cited Originalism Scholars, 2016-2020 [Corrected]
Michael Ramsey
Inspired by Gregory Sisk (St. Thomas) and Brian Leiter (Chicago), who have been ranking law faculties and individual professors by citation counts, here is a ranking of the top originalist-oriented scholars by citations, for the period 2016-2020. (It uses Professor Sisk's methodology but the calculations are mine). The number represents the total number of articles in the Westlaw "law reviews and journals" database and published between 2016 and 2020 (inclusive) that cited any of the person's writing.
- Jack Balkin (Yale), 1655
- Akhil Amar (Yale), 1449
- Michael McConnell (Stanford), 1043
- Randy Barnett (Georgetown), 977
- Lawrence Solum (Virginia), 869
- Steven Calabresi (Northwestern), 781
- William Baude (Chicago), 761
- Gary Lawson (Boston University), 727
- Saikrishna Prakash (Virginia), 648
- John McGinnis (Northwestern), 641
- Ilya Somin (George Mason), 598
- Keith Whittington (Princeton - Political Science), 586
- Caleb Nelson (Virginia), 551
- Michael Paulsen (St. Thomas), 526
- Philip Hamburger (Columbia), 518
- Josh Blackman (South Texas), 447
- Michael Rappaport (San Diego), 396
- Stephen Sachs (Harvard), 349
- Michael Ramsey (San Diego), 311
- John Harrison (Virginia), 305
- (tie) Bradford Clark (George Washington), 229; Kurt Lash (Richmond), 229
Likely I've forgotten some people so this is only a preliminary list. Please send corrections.
Further notes: there is some some grey area concerning who should be called an "originalist-oriented scholar"; I've generally gone with self-identification. Also, I have not included professors (like my colleague Larry Alexander) who self-identify as originalists but write mostly in areas unrelated to originalism.
CORRECTION #1: Jack Balkin has also published as J.M. Balkin. The initial post did not take that into account. His count has been adjusted upward by 145 cites.
CORRECTION #2: The initial post omitted Ilya Somin (George Mason) because I was not sure he considered himself an originalist. However, he confirms that he is, at minimum, an "originalist-oriented scholar." So he has been added (at #11). And now there are 22 scholars in the top 20.