View of the world from Massachusetts Avenue

A loyal reader passes along an article from the Harvard Law Record discussing Professor Larry Lessig's move from Stanford to Harvard, and his shift in academic focus from intellectual property to campaign finance. The Record breathlessly announces:

With the reacquisition of Lessig, the hiring spree begun by Dean Elena Kagan '86 has now succeeded in bringing nearly all the United States' foremost experts on internet law to HLS...

"Nearly all"? Really? I suspect there are quite a few reading that sentence in places like Berkeley and Palo Alto and Santa Clara and Los Angeles and New York -- and plenty of other places whose zip code is not 02138 -- who would humbly beg to differ.

Interestingly, the 2008 US News rankings of best law school IP programs (not exactly the same as "internet law," but a reasonable proxy) don't include Harvard at all. According to US News, the top 10 are: Berkeley, Stanford, GW, Columbia, Franklin Pierce, Duke, University of Houston, Santa Clara, BU, and Chicago-Kent.

It's ridiculous that it needs to be said, but sometimes it does need to be said: there are signs of intelligent life beyond Harvard Square. Believe me.

(Headline updated. Props to Saul Steinberg.)