Legal Affairs has unveiled a poll asking readers to name “the country’s most influential and important legal thinkers�the ones whose ideas are pushing the law forward (or backward, as the case may be).”

The magazine lists 125 academics, judges, and writers/commentators. To compile the list of legal academics, the editors say they relied on rankings by Fred Shapiro, a librarian at Yale Law School, and by Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas. For the writers/commentators, the magazine explains “there was no obvious way to be scientific about a list of writers and contributors, so we picked those who catch our attention among print, TV, and Internet commentators.”

The list of writers/commentators includes a few conservatives and right-leaners (Terry Eastland, Paul Gigot, Stuart Taylor, Jr.), a few libertarian types (Walter Olson, Glenn Reynolds, Nat Hentoff), lawyer-novelists (Scott Turow, John Grisham), TV talking heads (Dan Abrams, Fred Graham) and a large assortment of liberals (Michael Kinsley, Nina Totenberg, Anthony Lewis, Linda Greenhouse, etc.)

What’s striking to me is how hopelessly Sept. 10 the magazine’s list is. How could the editors overlook so many of the nation’s most active and provocative scholars and writers and thinkers on law/terrorism?

Andrew McCarthy

Heather Mac Donald

Ruth Wedgwood

John Yoo

Michael Chertoff

Viet Dinh

And that’s just off the top of my head. Legal Affairs bills itself as the magazine “at the intersection of law and life.” What world are the editors living in?

Update: Spoons casts his vote here.

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