Empirical Legal Studies Blog
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A collaborative blog by several law and political science professors brings an empirically and statistically based perspective to legal studies. Posts typically discuss new research in empirical legal scholarship and empirical claims in the news and politics in a broadly accessible way. Especially of interest to those curious about the intersection of stats and the law.
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
2w ago
While such questions as "are regulators across countries 'in the pockets' of large banks?" and "do supervisors provide favorable treatment when bailing out large, global systemically important banks?" persist, conventional wisdom strongly implies that "regulators around the world give [Too-Big-To-Fail] TBTF banks preferential treatment in bailouts relative to other banks, often viewed as an unfair advantage for these banks."
While an unfair regulatory advantage tilting in favor of TBTF banks has "been engrained in the minds of banking researchers, policy makers, and the public around the world ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
3w ago
If evidence of empirical legal studies’ growth was not already obvious enough in the peer-reviewed journal world, traditional student-edited law reviews also evidence a turn toward ELS as well. And no more so than perhaps the Northwestern University Law Review which is pleased to announce its 7th annual issue dedicated to empirical legal scholarship, to be published in March 2025. According to the student editors, they seek "to bring cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, empirical work to our legal audience, and enrich our understanding of the law, legal actors, and legal doctrine through robust an ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
1M ago
Most empirical judicial decisionmaking scholarship on federal circuit courts tries to exploit something close to quasi-random assignments to three-judge appellate panels. While attention typically focuses on judge votes, in a recent paper, Partisan Panel Composition and Reliance on Earlier Opinions in the Circuit Courts, Stuart Minor Benjamin (Duke) et al. instead focus on whether panel composition (partisanship) influences how judges rely on prior case law.
Drawing on a data set that includes "all published and unpublished federal appellate opinions in the Lexis database that were issued betw ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
1M ago
Co-organized by Bernie Black (Northwestern) and Scott Cunningham (Baylor—econ), the 13th annual workshop on Research Design for Causal Inference will be held at Northwestern Law School in Chicago, IL.
Main Workshop: Monday – Friday, July 29--August 2, 2024; Advanced Workshop: Sunday -- Wednesday, August 4-7, 2024.
Main Workshop Topics/Faculty: Introduction to Modern Methods for Causal Inference: Donald B. Rubin (Harvard Univ.); Matching and Reweighting Designs for “Pure” Observational Studies (Brigham Frandsen, BYU); Panel Data and Difference-in-Differences (Yiqing Xu, Stanford); Instrum ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
1M ago
The political science literature increasingly paints a picture of distinctive "red" and "blue" states that separate from each other on a growing number of issues. If accurate, one may plausibly assume that this separation would increasingly be reflected in differences among "red" and "blue" state criminal codes, especially because, as Paul Robinson (Penn.) et al. argue, "a jurisdiction’s criminal law rules commonly reflect that community’s most basic shared values, probably more than many if not most other areas of legislation."
In a recent paper, Red Codes, Blue Codes? Factors Influencing the ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
1M ago
Guide by the conference's theme: "The Era of AI and Sustainability: Opportunity and Challenge for Law and Economics," the AsLEA invites article manuscripts or abstracts or session proposals by March 31, 2024, for consideration. The conference, hosted at the National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), will include keynote addresses by Adam Chilton (Chicago) and Scott Baker (Wash U). For more (and updated) information click here; email inquiries to: aslea2024@ncku.edu.tw ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
2M ago
When assessing whether a model warrants fixed- or random-effects, threats posed by, among other factors, autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity typically loom large. A recent discussion of this topic emerged on the StataList (click here) and considers various approaches ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
2M ago
SELS Global Conference, Brazil 2024
São Paulo - June 5-7, 2024
Call for Papers -- Regular Paper Deadline: 31 January 2024
The 2024 SELS Global Conference on Empirical Legal Studies [Brazil] is now accepting submissions. Organizers will consider empirical papers spanning all areas of empirical legal studies. Authors are encouraged to submit works-in-progress; however, submissions should be completed drafts that include principal results. Submitted papers must be unpublished (and expected to be unpublished at the time of the conference).
The Early Paper Submission Deadline is Thursday, December ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
2M ago
In a recent (and mercifully brief) review essay, Empirical Constitutional Studies (reviewing Adam Chilton & Mila Versteeg's How Constitutional Rights Matter (OUP, 2020)), Arthur Dyevre (KU Leuven Centre for Legal Theory and Empirical Jurisprudence) takes the occasion to opine more generally on ELS' recent (and growing) "intrusion" into the comparative constitutional law field.
When it comes to empirically assessing constitutions and constitutional rights, Dyevre is mindful of the obvious methodological challenges for empiricists. After all, "comparing countries, even when observed over man ..read more
Empirical Legal Studies Blog
3M ago
Both an interesting--and instructive (that is, the response)--brief discussion incident to a question about whether to nest or cluster health care data in a hospital setting emerged recently in the StataList. That a single patient may have been admitted into multiple hospitals over time is yet another complicating wrinkle that warrants attention. One take-away from the discussion is that every detail involving how to structure an analysis requires careful consideration ..read more