At Harvard Law, new competition for Yale
While Yale Law School recently lost several big-name professors, its rival in Cambridge has been expanding aggressively — often directly at Yale’s expense.
Harvard’s latest appointments are part of a host of changes under the deanship of Elena Kagan targeted at dispelling stereotypes about Harvard Law School’s low quality of life, large class sizes and an inaccessible faculty. Under her tenure, the school has halved some class sizes, renovated several buildings and started construction on several more, invigorated its fund-raising efforts and unveiled an initiative to encourage its...
"even if only half of Harvard’s professors were outstanding scholars, it could still be more than Yale’s total faculty."
This is not quite true: Harvard Law's faculty is not quite double the size of Yale's. (It's something like 1.67 times size.) When you consider that Harvard Law has way more than double the number of students that Yale has (I believe it's 3 times as many) you can see part of why Yale retains a major advantage.
However, I don't agree with the quote for another reason: the vast bulk of the professors at Harvard, Yale, and other top law schools are "outstanding." There are enough to go around.
This article doesn't mention it -- the author apparently having become invested in this narrative of Harvard winning out in the competition with Yale -- but Yale made two major, high-profile raids on Harvard a couple of years ago: Christine Jolls and Heather Gerken. Both are real superstars who have greatly enriched Yale's faculty at Harvard's expense. I would be surprised if there are not additional raids in both directions forever.