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2. See the World Bank Doing Business Reports, available at http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings (accessed 17 March 2014).

3. Hart, M The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential People in History (New York: Citadel Press, 2000).Google Scholar

4. The BBC, for instance, organised the 100 greatest Britons in 2002 and in Germany the ZDF organised ‘Unsere Besten’ according to a similar concept. Similar initiatives can be found in a host of other countries.

5. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Silent (accessed 17 March 2014).

6. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4015173.stm (accessed 17 March 2014).

7. Comparative lawyers use the term ‘tertium comparationis’ to point to the fact that legal systems that one wants to compare need to be comparative by a third unit apart from the two legal comparanda. This third unit is supposed to be the common denominator. Örücü, AE ‘Methodology of comparative law’ in Smits, J (ed) Elgar Encyclopedia of Comparative Law (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2nd edn, 2012) p 561.Google Scholar

8. Film-maker Theo van Gogh was killed by a Muslim extremist less than 2 weeks before the television show was broadcast.

9. See eg http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/index.jsp and www.myedu.com/sign-up/ (formerly known as ‘pick-a-prof’) (both accessed 17 March 2014).

10. This partly explains the criticism levelled at popular websites such as http://www.ratemyprofessors.com, which are closer to a popularity contest than a serious evaluation of professors' performance in terms of teaching qualities. See http://sites.bio.indiana.edu/~bender/resources/Assessment/fractalevals10.pdf (accessed 17 March 2014).

11. See http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/jun/27/journals-index-angers-european-academics (accessed 17 March 2014).

12. See the special issue on globalisation and legal education: Chiesa, N, de Luca, A and Maheandiranthe, B (eds) ‘Following the call of the wild: the promises and perils of transnationalizing legal education’ (2009) 10 German L J 629–1168.Google Scholar

13. See the report by the Cohen Committee, Sustainable Humanities (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008) p 41, explaining that in the humanities there is an ‘inadequate range of tools for objectively defining and differentiating quality’.Google ScholarPubMed

14. See B de Witte ‘European Union law: a unified academic discipline?’ (2008) Eui Working Papers Rscas no 34, available at http://cadmus.eui.eu/dspace/handle/1814/10028 (accessed 17 March 2014).

15. See H Morris ‘University ranking shows boom in global student mobility’ International Herald Tribune, 11 September 2012, referring to data gathered by QS, World University Ranking: http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/new-look-rankings-show-unstoppable-rise-student-mobili (accessed 17 March 2014).

16. No particular figures seem to be available for legal scholars. For the general trend in all fields of research, see Idea Consult ‘Study on mobility patterns and career paths of Eu researchers’, Final report (Brussels, June 2010), available at http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/pdf/research_policies/MORE_final_report_final_version.pdf (accessed 17 March 2014).

17. Technically it is possible to generate a European law schools ranking from the QS world ranking, but the credibility of this ranking would be seriously affected by the limited data set and reliance on reputational surveys. It is also possible to use this ranking to rank schools by citation counts on Scopus, but that would also offer a very limited perspective of law school quality. See http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2013/law-and-legal-studies (accessed 17 March 2014).

18. One could come to an informal ranking for European law journals by using Google Scholar Metrics. See http://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues (accessed 17 March 2014). Google Scholar Metrics is a recent initiative, which currently only covers articles published between 2008 and 2012. The metrics are based on citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar in July 2013. It excludes all sorts of citations that would be relevant for law, such as books and dissertations but also court opinions and so on.

19. See http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/ (accessed 17 March 2014).

20. This does not imply that US student-edited journals necessarily publish lower-quality papers than European peer-reviewed journals. Some of the top law journals in the US are student-edited, although some have also introduced (un)official peer review practices for certain types of articles (eg empirical legal research). For a typical example, see http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2011/08/chicago-law-review-chutzpah.html (accessed 17 March 2014).

21. More generally, it is not always clear why a journal should receive a certain ranking. It can be the number of prescriptions, in which case general interest journals in bigger jurisdictions will always have an advantage over specialist journals in smaller jurisdictions; it can be done on the basis of the rejection rate, which tells little about what is rejected and why; or it can be the number of downloads or citations, which may also have different reasons than quality alone, such as accessibility. The German Law Journal, for instance, became – over a period of 10 years – the world's leading online peer-reviewed law journal in terms of the numbers of citations. See http://germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=1 (accessed 17 March 2014).

22. See http://lawlib.wlu.edu/LJ/index.aspx (accessed 17 March 2014).

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26. See http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings (accessed 17 March 2014).

27. See http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings (accessed 17 March 2014).

28. See http://www.leidenranking.com (accessed 17 March 2014).

29. For an interesting comparison of the quite different outcomes of Times and Sunday Times University League Tables 2014 (one of the UK rankings) and the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2013–2014 on UK law schools, see Matthias Siems' legal blog of 6 October 2013, available at http://siemslegal.blogspot.nl/2013/10/the-discrepancy-between-uk-and-global.html (accessed 17 March 2014).

30. Expert Group on Assessment of University-Based Research ‘Assessing Europe's university-based research’ (Brussels: Directorate-General for Research, 2010) at 9–10.Google Scholar

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33. Brophy, A ‘The emerging importance of law review rankings for law school rankings, 2003–2007’ (2007) 78 U Colo L Rev 35.Google Scholar

34. What is confusing, however, is that the concept of peer review is used in many different ways. Some reserve the use of the term for the process of subjecting an author's scholarly research to the scrutiny of independent experts in the same field, before a paper is published in a journal. Others see scrutiny by a publisher or an editorial board also as peer review, or include in the definition the refereeing of research proposals for funding.

35. See F van Vught and F Ziegele (eds) ‘U-Multirank: design and testing the feasibility of a multidimensional global university ranking’ (Consortium for Higher Education and Research Performance Assessment, June 2011) at 37.

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38. See Smits, J The Mind and Method of the Legal Academic (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2012) p 130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. Numerous examples can be found in: Thornton, M Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law (New York: Routledge, 2012);Google Scholar Bok, D Universities in the Market Place: The Commercialization of Higher Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004);Google Scholar Lorenz, C (ed) If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? Universiteit, markt en management (Amsterdam: Boom, 2008).Google Scholar

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44. European University Association ‘Global university rankings and their impact’, report (Brussels: European University Association, 2011) at 20.Google Scholar

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46. European University Association, above n 44, at 15.

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52. However, the nature of doctrinal-legal research is also changing. van Gestel, R and Micklitz, H ‘Revitalising doctrinal legal research in Europe: what about methodology?’ in Neergaard, U, Nielsen, R and Roseberry, L (eds) European Legal Method (Copenhagen: DJOF, 2011) pp 25–75 (also available at http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/16825, accessed 17 March 2014).Google Scholar

53. Expert Group on Assessment of University-Based Research, above n 30, at 43.

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58. In the US, many students were misled by law school rankings and made expensive choices to go to study law at certain schools, so that many of them now have severe debts, which will be hard to repay. See inter alia Tamanaha, B Failing Law Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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62. For an overview of the problems with the ranking of universities in general, see van Vught and Ziegele, above n 35, at 27–34.

63. Murray, J ‘Do Us law schools that report false or misleading employment statistics violate consumer protection laws?’ (2012) 15(3) J Consumer & Com L 97.Google Scholar See also Kuncel, NR, Credé, M and Thomas, LL ‘The validity of self-reported grade point averages, class ranks, and test scores: a meta-analysis and review of the literature’ (2005) 75(1) Rev Educ Res 63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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66. Teaching and learning, research, knowledge transfer, international orientation and regional engagement.

67. Instead, the U-Multirank tool uses sunburst charts and field charts. See Van Vugth and Ziegele, above n 35, at 18–19.

68. See House of Lords ‘The modernisation of higher education in Europe’ (London, March 2012) at 24–25.

69. For an overview, see http://www.llm-guide.com/law-school-rankings (accessed 17 March 2014).

70. It seems more likely that student choices will be influenced by a number of issues, including customer service from the administration, tuition fees, the availability of scholarships, discussions on blogs, location, language and so on.

71. Thornton, M ‘The law school, the market and the new knowledge economy’ (2009) 10(7) German L J 641.Google Scholar

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73. See http://research.unsw.edu.au/excellence-research-australia-era-outlet-ranking (accessed 17 March 2014); Ramsay, I and Stapledon, GP ‘A citation analysis of Australian law journals’ (1997) 21 Melb U L Rev 676;Google Scholar Warren, D ‘Australian law journals: an analysis of citation patterns’ (1996) 27 Austl Acad & Res Libr 261.Google Scholar

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78. For an example, see http://siemslegal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/world-law-journal-ranking-2011.html (accessed 17 March 2014).

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81. Svantesson, J ‘International ranking of law journals – can it be done and at what cost?’ (2009) 29(4) Legal Stud 678 at 685.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

82. Ibid, at 683.

83. Korobkin, above n 76, at 866.

84. In the case of empirical-legal research, how will the data be double-checked?

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86. See Tamanaha, above n 58, p 71 and further. See also Lorenz, above n 39.

87. With regard to the index, see http://thomsonreuters.com/arts-humanities-citation-index/ (accessed 17 March 2014).

88. Council for the Humanities and the Social Sciences Council ‘Judging research on its merits. an advisory report by the Council for the Humanities and the Social Sciences Council’ (Amsterdam: Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2005) at 17, available at https://www.knaw.nl/shared/resources/actueel/publicaties/pdf/20051029.pdf (accessed 17 March 2014).

89. See http://pf.ujep.cz/user_files/ERIH_zakladni%20informace.pdf (accessed 17 March 2014).

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93. See Royal Academy of Sciences ‘Quality indicators for research in the humanities’ (Amsterdam, 2011), available at http://www.knaw.nl/shared/resources/actueel/publicaties/pdf/20111024.pdf (accessed 17 March 2014).

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96. A recent survey among 1325 law professors, 338 student-editors, 215 attorneys and 156 judges in the US shows that all of these groups agree on the fact that important reforms are desperately needed for law reviews. Surprisingly, the vast majority agreed that the introduction of some type of blind peer review would increase the quality of the papers being published and diminish the current biases in the selection process. Wise, R et al ‘Do law reviews need reform? a survey of law professors, student-editors, attorneys and judges’ (2013) 59 Loy L Rev 1.Google Scholar

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99. See Mertz, E The Language of Law School: Learning to Think Like a Lawyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

100. Spitzer, above n 54, p 23.

101. Ibid, pp 24–25.

102. See http://www.scienceguide.nl/201306/multirank-milestone-reached.aspx (accessed 17 March 2014).

103. See B Tamanaha Failing Law Schools (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). See also http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_skills/2013/03/the-pernicious-influence-of-the-us-news-law-school-rankings.html (accessed 17 March 2014).

104. Crittenden, J ‘Building better ranking’ (2013) 22(5) Nat'l Jurist 24–27. See http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/cypress/nationaljurist0213/#/22 (accessed 17 March 2014).Google Scholar

105. Think of issues such as using a (PhD) student work in one's own publications without reference, plagiarism or selling out to sponsors of contract research.

106. In Switzerland, for example, where the Conference of the Swiss Universities (CRUS) has started a project ‘Research evaluation in law’. See http://www.rechtswissenschaft.unibe.ch/unibe/rw_neu/content/e1984/e373454/e373467/e386328/e386329/files386330/Lienhard_Amschwand_HerrmannLeGes2013_2_ger.pdf (accessed 17 March 2014). In The Netherlands, the deans of the joint law schools have established a committee on classification of law journals, chaired by the dean of Maastricht law school. See Du Perron, E ‘De kwalificatie van rechtswetenschappelijke tijdschrift, in van Dijck, G et al (eds) Cirkels: een terugblik op een vooruitziende blik (Deventer: Kluwer, 2013) pp 191–199.Google Scholar