Dear President Folt, Provost Zukoski and Dean Guzman:
We are writing as faculty members, legal scholars, journal editors and editorial board members to voice our concerns over the tenure review process of Professor Shmuel Leshem. Appointed as Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law in 2006, Professor Leshem was denied tenure at USC in 2013 following a highly disconcerting tenure review. Our concerns revolve around asserted irregularities in Leshem's tenure review process: improper solicitation, unconsented distribution and adverse use of referee reports and editor letters, particularly in lieu of the outside tenure review letters that had been requested in accordance with the standard tenure review procedures.
As part of the peer-review publication process, journal editors rely on anonymous referee reports to screen draft papers for acceptance, rejection or revision, and to provide authors with feedback for improving their draft paper for a revision or a subsequent submission. Peer-review reports are confidential and often contain critical comments irrespective of the referees' recommendation or the editorial decision. It is common and anticipated for authors to first submit their research to the very best journals only to publish in a lower-ranked journal after a few rounds of submission. During Leshem's first years of teaching, several of his papers were published in leading peer-reviewed journals.
As participants in and beneficiaries of the peer-review publication process, we would like to express unequivocal disapproval of any solicitation, unauthorized distribution and prejudicial use of peer-review reports for tenure review purposes. An unauthorized distribution or exposure of peer-review reports or their contents is not only an abuse of the reports (not contemplated by journal editors or referees) but also a violation of an author's rights to privacy and confidentiality. We strongly object to an unauthorized use of information or inferences obtained from peer-review documents for evaluating scholarship for tenure purposes, which is contrary to prevailing academic norms.
A substitution of peer-review reports and journal rejections for standard tenure review letters not only undermines the tenure review process but also hobbles the peer-review evaluation system. Reluctant to harm deserving promotion prospects, referees and editors would be disinclined to make critical comments on untenured authors' submitted papers. Untenured authors on their part might be hesitant to submit their draft papers to higher quality peer-reviewed journals where comments tend to be more critical but often more helpful. The substitution of peer-review information for standard tenure letters would consequently impair the peer-review process and compromise the overall quality of academic research.
Adherence to standards, procedures and rules and observance of basic norms of decency and civility throughout the tenure review process are vital for providing young scholars with the confidence to carry out innovative research. The success of the academic enterprise indeed depends on the integrity and honesty of the promotion processes. We are calling on the University of Southern California to investigate and rectify Leshem’s tenure-denial case and thereby shore up norms of academic integrity, privacy and fair process, thus safeguarding the promotion process and securing the peer-review system.
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1. Abraham Wickelgren, Bernard J. Ward Professor of Law, University of Texas at Austin and Co-Editor Journal of Law, Economics and Organization
2. Marcel Kahan, George T. Lowy Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, Member of Editorial Board, Journal of Legal Analysis
3. Kathryn Zeiler, Nancy Barton Scholar and Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; Chair of the Board of Directors of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies; Member of the Editorial Board, American Law and Economics Review
4. Jennifer Arlen, Norma Z. Paige Professor of Law and Director of the NYU Program on Corporate Compliance and Enforcement; past-President of the American Law and Economics Association and co-founder and past-President of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.
5. Andrew Daughety, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Vanderbilt University, past Co-Editor Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, past Associate Editor, RAND Journal of Economics
6. Jennifer F Reinganum, E Bronson Ingram Chair and Professor of Economics, Emerita, Vanderbilt University, past Co-Editor of the RAND Journal of Economics, past Co-Editor of the Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, past President of the American Law and Economics Association
7. Samuel Estreicher, Dwight D. Opperman Professor of Law & Codirector, Institute of Judicial Administration, New York University School of Law
8. Bernard Black, Nicholas J. Chabraja Professor, Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law and Kellogg School of Management, Department of Finance and Founding and Executive Editor, Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting
9. Geoffrey Parsons Miller, Stuyvesant Comfort Professor of Law, NYU Law School; Co-Director, NYU Law School Center on Civil Justice; former editor, Journal of Legal Studies; co-founder, Society for Empirical Legal Studies
10. Lewis A. Kornhauser, Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law, New York University, past President of the American Law and Economics Association, member of the Editorial Board, Review of Law and Economics
11. Nuno Garoupa, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research & Faculty Development, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, past Editor, International Review of Law and Economics (2012-2020) and Review of Law and Economics (2004-2010), President of Spanish Association of Law and Economics.
12. Joshua C. Teitelbaum, Professor of Law and Agnes N. Williams Research Professor, Georgetown University Law Center; Associate Editor, International Review of Law and Economics; Associate Editor, Supreme Court Economic Review; former Associate Dean for Research and Academic Programs, Georgetown University Law Center.
13. Avraham Tabbach, Professor of Law, Tel-Aviv University, Associate Editor, International Review of Law and Economics
14. Eric Langlais, Professor of Economics, EconomiX-CNRS & University of Paris-Nanterre, past-Secretary of the European Association of Law and Economics, Associate Editor of International Review of Law and Economics
15. Enrico Santarelli, Professor of Economics - University of Bologna (Editor of Small Business Economics)
16. Emanuela Carbonara, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Bologna and Editor, International Review of Law and Economics, Director of Law and Economics Program, Department of Sociology and Business Law
17. Tim Friehe, Professor of Public Economics at the University of Marburg, Member of the Board of the EALE and the Editorial Boards of the Supreme Court Economic Review and the Asian Journal of Law and Economics
18. Henrik Lando, Professor of law and economics, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
19. Gerd Muehlheusser, Professor of Economics, University of Hamburg, Managing Editor of the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE)
20. Johannes-Bernhard Schäfer, Bucerius Law School (Hamburg), Coeditor of the International Review of Law and Economics (1995-2012)
21. Daria Roithmayr, Richard and Antoinette Kirtland Professor of Law, University of Southern California Gould School of Law
22. Michael Klausner, Nancy and Charles Munger Professor of Business and Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
23. Jens Dammann, Ben H. and Kitty King Powell Chair in Business and Commercial Law
24. Kenneth Ayotte, Professor of Law, U.C. Berkeley School of Law
25. Alan Miller, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Law and Economics, Western University; Senior Lecturer, University of Haifa; Associate Editor, Mathematical Social Sciences
26. Alison Morantz, James and Nancy Kelso Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
27. Robert Daines, Pritzer Professor of Law and Business, Stanford Law School
28. Claude Fluet, Professor of Economics, Laval University, and Centre de Recherche en Economie et Droit (University Pantheon Assas)
29. Katherine Litvak, Professor, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
30. Zohar Goshen, Jerome L. Greene Professor of Transactional Law, Columbia Law School
31. Chuck Cameron, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
32. Alexander Stremitzer, Professor of Law, Economics, and Business, ETH Zurich
33. Alon Harel, Mizock Professor of Law, Hebrew University
34. Massimo D'Antoni, Professor of Public Economics, University of Siena (Italy)
35. Sharon Hannes, Dean and Professor of Law, Tel-Aviv University
36. Alex Raskolnikov, Wilbur H. Friedman Professor of Tax Law, Columbia Law School
37. Ehud Kamar, Professor of Law, Tel Aviv University
38. David Gilo, Full Professor, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
39. Yoram Margalioth, Professor of Law, Tel-Aviv University
40. Michal Barzuza, Professor, UVA Law School
41. Jesse Fried, Dane Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
42. Giuseppe Dari Mattiacci, Alfred W. Bressler Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
43. Ramy Elitzur, The Edward Kernaghan Professor in Financial Analysis, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
44. Varda Yaari, senior lecturer (former), Department of Business Administration, School of Business, Ben Gurion University
45. Brian Bix, Frederick W. Thomas Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Minnesota
46. Robert Eli Rosen, Professor of Law, University of Miami; member of the International Editorial Boards for Legal Ethics and The International Journal of Law in Context
47. Milan Markovic, Professor of Law, Presidential Impact Fellow, and Co-Convener of the Program in Law & Social Science, Texas A&M University School of Law
48. Mirit Eyal-Cohen, Professor of Law, Irving Silver and Frances Grodsky Silver Faculty Scholar, University of Alabama School of Law
49. James C Spindler, Hart Chair in Corporate and Securities Law, University of Texas Law School; Professor, UT McCombs School of Business
50. Rebecca Stone, Professor of Law, UCLA
51. Joshua Fischman, Professor, University of Virginia School of Law
52. Robert J. Pushaw, James Wilson Endowed Professor, Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law
53. Albert Choi, Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School and Co-Editor American Law and Economics Review
54. Stephen F. Diamond, Associate Professor of Law, Santa Clara University School of Law
55. Avishalom Tor, Professor of Law and Director of the Notre Dame Program on Law and Market Behavior
56. Florian Baumann, Professor of Law and Economics, CASTLE, University of Bonn, Germany
57. Steven Lubet, Williams Memorial Professor, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law
58. Reuven Avi-Yonah, Irwin I. Cohn Professor of Law, the University of Michigan
59. Simone Sepe, Professor of Law and Finance, the University of Arizona
60. Yair Listokin, Shibley Family Fund Professor of Law, Yale Law School
61. Jill Horwitz, Vice Dean for Faculty and Intellectual Life, Professor of Law, UCLA
62. David Enoch, the Rodney Blackman Chair in the Philosophy of Law, The Faculty of Law and the Philosophy Department, Hebrew University
63. Larry Temkin, Distinguished Professor and Former Chair of Philosophy, and Director of the Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy, Rutgers University
64. Ruth Chang, Chair and Professor of Jurisprudence, The University of Oxford
65. Peter L. Vallentyne, Florence G. Kline Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri, Columbia
66. R A Duff, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Stirling; founding co-editor of Criminal Law and Philosophy
67. Wil Waluchow, Professor and Senator McMaster Chair in Constitutional Studies, McMaster University, Canada
68. Andrei Marmor, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Philosophy & Law, Director, Program on Ethics & Public Life, Cornell University
69. Matthew H. Kramer FBA, Professor of Legal & Political Philosophy, Cambridge University; Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge
70. Michael H. Shapiro, (Emeritus) Dorothy W. Nelson Professor of Law, Gould School of Law, University of Southern California.
71. Gary Watson, Provost Professor of philosophy and law, emeritus, University of Southern California
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Request for endorsement