The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law is the law school of Yeshiva University. Located in New York City and founded in 1976, the school is named for Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo. Cardozo graduated its first class in 1979. An LL.M. program was established in 1998. Cardozo is nondenominational and has a secular curriculum, in contrast to some of YU's undergraduate programs. Around 320 students begin the J.D. program per year, of whom about 57% are women. In addition, there are about 60-70 LL.M. students each year. Cardozo was ranked 52nd in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in 2023, but 69th in 2024 due in part to various changes USNWR's calculation of rank.
Academics
Admissions
For the class entering in 2022, Cardozo accepted 33.80% of applicants, with 27.12% of those accepted enrolling, the average enrollee having a 164 LSAT score and 3.76 undergraduate GPA.
Centers
Cardozo is home to academic centers including the FAME Center for fashion, arts, media & entertainment; the Innocence Project; the Florsheimer Center for Constitutional Democracy; the Data Law Initiative; the Blockchain Project; Cardozo/Google Patent Diversity Project; the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights; and the Heyman Center on Corporate Governance.
Faculty
Cardozo's faculty are notably productive in their scholarship. They were ranked 15th most prolific faculty in 1996, when the School of Law was only twenty years old. Ten years later the faculty had the 31st most SSRN downloads, and it is ranked 33rd in scholarly impact (as of 2021). Highly cited faculty members include Professors Myriam Gilles, Michael Herz, Peter Markowitz, Alexander Reinert, Anthony Sebok, Stewart Sterk and Edward Zelinsky. Cardozo's faculty were also the most productive per capita for articles in top journals from 1993 to 2012, for law schools outside of U.S. News & World Report Top 50 law schools.
Clinical teaching
Cardozo is noted for its focus on clinical teaching and practical experience. As part of the fulfillment of the J.D. requirements, students may choose to participate in clinics housed within the school, taking on legal work under faculty supervision. The clinics provide pro bono services to clients across a range of areas of legal practice, including both civil and criminal cases. Many clinics serve individual clients, while other clinics take on class action lawsuits. They include the Civil Rights Clinic; Bet Tzedek (focused on representing elderly and disabled people); Filmmakers Legal Clinic; Immigration Justice Clinic; the Innocence Project; Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic; and Tech Startup Clinic, among others. Perhaps the best known is the Innocence Project, run by Professor Barry Scheck, which has used DNA profiling to help free dozens of innocent people from prison. The project's work has been instrumental in a number of high-profile cases.
Rankings and achievements
Cardozo has seven faculty members who have clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and Cardozo has had two graduates chosen to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court: Sara J. Klein ’05 (for Justice John Paul Stevens) and Cliff Elgarten ’79 (for Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.). In 1999 Cardozo became a member of the Order of the Coif, an honor society for law scholars.
Cardozo was the second U.S. law school to secure an invitation to The European Law Moot Court Competition, and the first American law school to be invited twice consecutively. Many of Cardozo's 12,000 alumni reside in the New York metropolitan area, while many pursue their careers internationally and can be found across the country.
U.S. News ranked Cardozo 52nd out of 196 law schools in the country in 2022 (5th of 15 law schools in New York State). Cardozo's LL.M./Master of Laws program was ranked tenth by American Universities Admission Program in 2012. Cardozo ranked high in US News law specialties in Dispute Resolution (4th) and Intellectual Property Law (8th) as of the 2023 rankings. It has also been ranked in the top ten for its Music Law program. Cardozo got A-grades in several areas according to National Jurist's preLaw Magazine in 2018, including Tax Law, International Law, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and Business Law. PreLaw Magazine also ranked Cardozo highly in Government and Public Defender/Prosecutor specializations (11th).