BILL HENDERSON ON YALE’S WITHDRAWAL FROM THE U.S. NEWS RANKINGS: “By staying in the USN game, Dean Gerken had to accept legitimate growing criticism for perpetuating a terrible system while also running the risk of being the infamous dean on the day Yale tumbled to #2.”

Much more on Yale, law school finances, and the rankings game at the link.

Plus: “It’s plausible that the T-14 could form a new league, or bracket, of elite law schools. Yet, these schools are very far from being equally rich. What Yale can do through its endowment resources, other elite schools can only afford by charging tuition. Further, both students and employers are going to want, and search for, an ‘Eiffel Tower’ to coordinate their movements and order their preferences—vanity and status-seeking are endemic to the human condition. A school that last ranked at #8 or #12 is not going to be satisfied with a status that is frozen in time. Only a school that last ranked #1 is going to be fully content with the new order, thus making any T-14 bracket inherently unstable. But much more problematic is the fact that any explicit coordination to wall off the market and create sharing rules is going to raise federal antitrust issues, something that antitrust scholars are already mulling over.”