Max Planck Law is currently ranked number one on SSRN’s list of the top 500 International Law School by total new downloads.1 In this context, ‘International’ refers to institutions outside the United States. This accomplishment is a reflection of the reach and popularity of our research.
SSRN (the Social Science Research Network) is a major online repository for research papers in the social sciences and humanities, including law. It ranks institutions based on, amongst other things, the number of total new downloads of their research papers, which serves as an indicator of how widely read an institution’s scholarly work is and thus its potential impact. While ranking by total new downloads is just one of many metrics that can be used to gauge the impact of legal research, it nonetheless provides evidence of the practical and scholarly engagement with researchers’ outputs.
In addition to being the top-ranked ‘law school’ outside the United States, Max Planck Law also holds the distinction of being the only such institution featured amongst the top 750 law schools globally, based on the same metric.2 This list includes both US and international law schools and is otherwise dominated by leading US institutions.
