Scholarship

Empirical Legal Scholarship At Duke University Law School

Duke University has a vibrant research community involved in Empirical Legal Scholarship. Our Faculty Colloquium provides scholars with an opportunity to receive feedback on their ongoing research, while resources on Duke's campus and at local universities provide opportunities for faculty to expand their empirical knowledge. More information about local opportunities is available on the Training page.

Access to Empirical Legal Scholarship at Duke

The Faculty Scholarship Repository provides access to a wide variety of empirical legal scholarship by Duke Scholars. The Social Science Research Network also provides free access to a wide variety of scholarship, much of which focuses on empirical research. Locally, the following scholars at Duke are actively engaged in ELS:

Examples of Empirical Legal Scholarship

The field of ELS is growing rapidly, and many scholars have published works that are excellent examples of ELS. Below is a bibliography of ELS articles that exemplify a variety of methods and topics.

Stephen J. Choi and Mitu Gulat, Choosing the Next Supreme Court Justice: An Empirical Ranking of Judicial Performance UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 141; Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 473281; Georgetown Law and Economics Research Paper No. 473281 (2004).

James D. Cox and Randall S. Thomas, Letting Billions Slip Through Your Fingers: Empirical Evidence and Legal Implications of the Failure of Financial Institutions to Participate in Securities Class Action Settlements, (December 2004). Vanderbilt Law and Economics Research Paper No. 05-01.

Barak D. Richman and Jeffrey Macher, Transaction Cost Economics: An Assessment of Empirical Research in the Social Sciences, (August 2006). Duke Law School Legal Studies Paper No. 115.

Salzman, James E., Beyond the Smokestack: Environmental Protection in the Service Economy , Working Paper: April 25, 1999.

Schwarcz, Steven L.,Enron and the Use and Abuse of Special Purpose Entities in Corporate Structures, 70 U.Cincinnati L. Rev. 1309 (2006).

Neil Vidmar, Kara MacKillop and Paul Lee, Million Dollar Medical Malpractice Cases in Florida: Post-Verdicts and Pre-Suit Settlements, Vanderbilt L. Rev., Forthcoming.

Benesh, Sara C. and Malia Reddick. 2002. "Overruled: An Event History Analysis of Lower Court Reaction to Supreme Court Alterations of Precedent." Journal of Politics 64(2): 534-550.

Christine Boyd, Lee Epstein and Andrew Martin, Untangling the Causal Effects of Sex on Judging, 2nd Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, Paper available at SSRN

Theodore Eisenberg, Death Sentence Rates and County Demographics: An Empirical Study, 90 Cornell L. Rev. 347 (2005)

Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn & Jeffrey A. Segal, Ideological Drift Among Supreme Court Justices: Who, When, and How Important? 101 Northwest. U.L.Rev. 1483 (2007).

William Henderson, An Empirical Study of Single-Tier versus Two-Tier Partnerships in the Am Law 200, 84 N.C. L. Rev. __ (2006), Paper Available at SSRN.

Gregory Sisk, and Michael Heise, Judges and Ideology: Public and Academic Debates about Statistical Measures, 99 Northwest.U.L.Rev. 743 (2005).

There has also been a signficant debate on the value, methods, and future of ELS. The following articles provide a good outline of the state of the discipline:

Lee Epstein and Gary King, The Rules of Inference, 69 U.Chi.L.Rev. 1 (2002).

Frank Cross, Michael Heise and Gregory Sisk, Above the Rules: A Response to Epstein and King, 69 U.Chi.L.Rev 135 (2002).

Richard Revesz, A Defense of Empirical Legal Scholarship, 69 U.Chi.L.Rev. 169 (2002).

Lee Epstein and Gary King, A Defense of Empirical Legal Scholarship: A Reply, 69 U.Chi.L.Rev. 191 (2002).

Daniel Klerman, Statistical and Economic Approaches to Legal History, 2002 U.Ill.L.Rev.1167 (2002).

Jason J. Czarnezki and William Ford, The Phantom Philosophy? An Empirical Investigation of Legal Interpretation, 65 Maryland L.Rev. 841 (2006).

UCLA's Empirical Research Group has compiled an Empirical Legal Scholarship Bibliography. The bibliography is searchable by topic, author, title, or year. Users can also choose to download the entirety of the bibliography.

Where to publish Empirical Legal Scholarship?

Authors interested in publishing empirical legal scholarship have many potential avenues, in both traditional law reviews and peer-reviewed academic journals.

Peer Reviewed Academic Journals:

The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies publishes articles on a wide variety of topics, with a focus on a strong empirical component
The Journal of Law and Economics focuses on the intersection of law and economics
The Journal of Legal Studies publishes articles that emphasize social science approaches
Law and Policy publishes articles from a diverse background of viewpoints and methodologies
Law and Society Review publishes a wide variety of articles, including results of empirical studies
Law and Social Inquiry, which is published by the American Bar Association, promotes a wide variety of theoretical and methodological viewpoints.
I/S: A Journal of Law and Policy for the Information Society focuses on the intersection of law, policy, and information technology.

Law Reviews:

UCLA Law Review regularly publishes articles with empirical content, and has access to local resources (such as UCLA Law's Empirical Research Group) that ensure that empirical work received fair and even reviews.
Phoenix, The University of Chicago's Law Review is an avenue for the publication of empirical research, as they have a substantial history of publishing such works.
DePaul University Law Review has a mission of publishing "...empirical studies of local and national significance."
Northwestern University Law Review regularly publishes interdisciplinary empirical research in their review.
Vanderbilt University Law Review publishes a wide variety of empirical research.
The University of Wisconsin Law Review has a history of publishing a diverse offering of theoretical and methodological viewpoints.
Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy has taken an active interest in publishing empirical legal scholarship, particularly as it relates to public policy and the law.