Meriting a new post rather than a mere update, US News and World Report has made available online its 2006 law school rankings (top 100 / index page). The posted rankings confirm rankings leaked earlier this week from prematurely released print versions. Professor Brian Leiter of the University of Texas School of Law (#15, unchanged) checks in with an early comment here about a slight but "constructive" change in this year's methodology, concerning the calculation of median GPAs and LSATs. The change has produced no significant shake-up at the top of the rankings, which once again support the idea of "The Durability of Law School Reputation" [PDF], title of a study by Professor Richard Schmalbeck of the Duke University School of Law (11, down from 10).

Major movers abound in the middle of the top 50, however, including Fordham and UWash (27, up from 34) and Tulane (41, up from 55). Their less fortunate counterparts include Notre Dame and WashU (24, down from 20) and as Emory (32, down from 23). Kansas takes the dubious distinction, though, of biggest mover, taking a precipitous drop this year from 63 to 100 in the much more fluid 50-100 set of schools. Most critics regard that fluidity as evidence of the rankings' arbitrariness. Professor Leiter, however, evidently wishes that the rankings were more responsive to the very real annual changes in faculty quality. See here.

Meanwhile, students at 46 law schools, from Appalachian to Yale and representing the full spectrum of the rankings, are hoping for dry weather this weekend in Charlottesville. That's because the University of Virginia School of Law is once again hosting its annual law softball invitational. Teams from host school UVA enter the tournament as defending champions in both the regular and co-rec divisions. Your humble editor is pleased to be captaining the University of Pittsburgh School of Law's regular division team and encourages readers to follow the rankings fallout in his absence. Press releases alternately highlighting and downplaying schools' rankings are sure to appear on Friday and following days.