Please tell me this is a joke.

I officially have no respect for the Social Science Research Network, whatever the hell that is.

...TS here. Being named "one of the 10 most influential legal scholars in America by the Social Science Research Network" is not as prestigious you might think. According to my source at the SSRN, "influence" is dictate purely by number of downloads. (I don't believe the UT mention this!) Mr. Reynolds' papers, which he links to frequently, are naturally downloaded quite often.

So if, say, Perez Hilton had written a paper about, say, "Britney Spears and the Application of the 4th Amendment in the Twenty-First Century," it's a safe bet that Mr. Hilton too would be considered "influential."

UPDATE

Is that the best publicity photo the University of Tennessee has of Putz? Geez.