Unlike many of my colleagues, I commenced my U.S. academic career after the U.S. News started ranking law schools so I have no memory of a time before the rankings. So I started thinking about what would happen in a time "after the rankings". What would happen if the U.S. News stopped ranking law schools (and no one stepped in to take their place, or someone stepped in but ranked so differently to the U.S. News that the rankings weren't comparable)?
Would the rankings effectively become frozen in time and the last printed rankings govern our thinking about the comparative worth of law schools for years to come? Or would our thoughts about rankings quietly fade away into the ether?
How would we play the "trading up" game in the land of the law journals in the absence of updated rankings? (And how was that game played in the past before the rankings? I'd really like to know.)
I know this is all fanciful. As long as there's money to be made from ranking law schools, there's no incentive not to do it and plenty of incentive to continue. But I've internalized the rankings so effectively over the last decade or so that I couldn't help but wonder what would happen without them? Do they give us all a peculiar sense of security about our place in the world, despite how much we criticize and lament the way they shape law school practices, often in undesirable directions?