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What do you think of Dean Garvey’s response below?

The 2010 U.S. News and World Report rankings, released today, show that BC Law is ranked 28th, down from 26th last year. This is a disappointment, and it certainly does not reflect the true value of Boston College Law School. We need to work harder to bring the two into alignment.

In the last few years we have put in place a number of important initiatives meant to strengthen the School. They should have the added benefit of improving our ranking:

John Garvey, Dean of Boston College Law SchoolJohn Garvey, the Dean of Boston College Law School, chimed in on the Brown – Coakley debate in the Boston Herald today.  In an Op/Ed entitled “Disdains Scott Brown’s Conscience,” Garvey jabs Coakley, arguing that the Massachusetts Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate’s position on emergency contraceptives is like “drafting a Quaker into the infantry and ordering him to shoot the enemy.” Garvey also defends Scott Brown ‘84, likening the front-running and sometimes-clothed law-student-turned-politician to none other than First Amendment author James Madison.

But let’s back up.

Scott Brown ‘85The issue is whether hospital employees who provide care to victims of sexual assault should be given a conscientious objector-like right to exempt themselves from a Massachusetts law requiring them to provide information about birth control to victims of sexual assault.

In an article in today’s Boston Globe, Dean Garvey addressed the potential for six of the nine Supreme Court Justices to be Catholics if Judge Sotomayor’s nomination is confirmed by the Senate:

“It

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On April 22, Dean Garvey issued a memorandum to students in the Class of 2009 regarding the economy’s effect on the job market.  A paucity of job offers and a barrage of deferments contribute to the “difficult year for law school graduates.”  The memo reflects the stopgap measures the Law School is extending to the graduating class.

The powers that be in the Law School “devoted a lot of thought over the past few months to ways we could help,” both in finding jobs and making “productive use of time” while waiting out deferments.  Among the solutions offered by the school:

“We must not lose our identity in chasing a few percentage points,” said Dean Garvey in a written memorandum emailed to the school on Wednesday.  The U.S. News rankings “cannot hope to capture the soul of an institution.”

Dean Garvey’s missive highlighted the inner workings of the U.S. News rankings system, listing the criteria used and noting that the schools ranked from 20 to 30 “are very tightly bunched.”  The memorandum sought to explain that despite BCLS’s ranking being identical to that of last year, a lot of variation should be expected.

Today’s New York Times featured an article by Jonathan D. Glatner about two professors at the University of California, Berkeley who have come up with a test that, they say, is better at predicting success in the field of law than the widely used Law School Admission Test (LSAT). On supplementing (not replacing) the LSAT, our very own Dean Garvey had the following to say: “It would be good for us and for other schools to have other measures that complement the LSAT and that would help us identify promising candidates.”