Harvard Empirical Legal Studies Series
5005 Wasserstein Hall (WCC) 1585 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA02138
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The Harvard Empirical Legal Studies (HELS) Series explores a range of empirical methods, both qualitative and quantitative, and their application in legal scholarship in different areas of the law. It is a platform for engaging with current empirical research, hearing from leading scholars working in a variety of fields, and developing ideas and empirical projects.
HELS is open to all students and scholars with an interest in empirical research. No prior background in empirical legal research is necessary. If you would like to join HELS and receive information about our sessions, please subscribe to our mailing list by completing the HELS mailing list form .
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact the current HELS coordinator, Tiran Bajgiran.
All times are provided in U.S. Eastern Time (UTC/GMT-0400).
Spring 2024 Sessions
Empire and the shaping of american constitutional law.
Aziz Rana, BC Law
Monday, Mar. 25, 12:15 PM Lewis 202
This talk will explore how US imperial practice has influenced the methods and boundaries of American constitutional study.
Historical Approaches to Neoliberal Legality
Quinn Slobodian, Boston University
Thursday, Mar. 28, 12:15 PM Lewis 202
Fall 2023 Sessions
On critical quantitative methods.
Hendrik Theine , WU, Vienna/Univ. of Pennsylvania Monday, Nov. 6, 12:30 PM Lewis 202
Economic inequality is a profound challenge in the United States. Both income and wealth inequality increased remarkably since the 1980s. This growing concentration of economic inequality creates real-world political and societal problems which are increasingly reflected by social science scholarship. Among those detriments is for instance the increasing economic and political power of the super-rich. The research at hand takes a new radical look at media discourses of economic inequality over four decades in various elite US newspapers by way of quantitative critical discourse analysis. It shows that up until recently, there was minimal media coverage of economic inequality, but interest has steadily increased since then. Initially, the focus was primarily on income inequality, but over time, it has expanded to encompass broader issues of inequality. Notably, the discourse on economic inequality is significantly influenced by party politics and elections. The study also highlights certain limitations in the discourse. Critiques of inequality tend to remain at a general level, discussing concepts like capitalist and racial inequality. There is relatively less focus on policy-related discussions, such as tax reform, or discussions centered around specific actors, like the wealthy and their charitable contributions.
Spring 2023 Sessions
How to conduct qualitative empirical legal scholarship.
Jessica Silbey , Professor of Law at Boston University Yanakakis Faculty Research Scholar
Friday, March 31, 12:30 PM WCC 3034
This session explores the benefits and some limitations of qualitative research methods to study intellectual property law. It compares quantitative research methods and the economic analysis of law in the same field as other kinds of empirical inquiry that are helpful in collaboration but limited in isolation. Creativity and innovation, the practices intellectual property law purports to regulate, are not amenable to quantification without identifying qualitative variables. The lessons from this session apply across fields of legal research.
Fall 2022 Sessions
How to read quantitative empirical legal scholarship.
Holger Spamann , Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law
Friday, September 13, 12:30 PM WCC 3007
As legal scholars, what tools do we need to read critically and engage productively with quantitative empirical scholarship? In the first session of the 2022-2023 Harvard Empirical Legal Studies Series, Harvard Law School Professor Holger Spamann will compare and discuss different quantitative studies. This session will be a first approximation to be able to understand and eventually produce empirical legal scholarship. All students and scholars interested in empirical research are welcome and encouraged to attend.
How do People Learn from Not Being Caught? An Experimental Investigation of a “Non-Occurrence Bias”
Tom Zur , John M. Olin Fellow and SJD candidate, HLS
Friday, November 4, 2:00 PM WCC 3007
The law and economics literature on specific deterrence has long theorized that offenders rationally learn from being caught and sanctioned. This paper presents evidence from a randomized controlled trial showing that offenders learn differently when not being caught as compared to being caught, which we call a “non-occurrence bias.” This implies that the socially optimal level of investment in law enforcement should be lower than stipulated by rational choice theory, even on grounds of deterrence alone.
Empirical Legal Research: Using Data and Methodology to Craft a Research Agenda
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler , NYU Boxer Family Professor of Law Faculty Director, NYU Law in Buenos Aires
Monday, November 14, 12:30 PM Lewis 202
Using a series of examples, this discussion will focus on strategies to conduct empirical legal research and develop a robust research agenda. Topics will include creating a data set and leveraging to answer unexplored questions, developing meaningful methodologies to address legal questions, building on existing work to develop a robust research agenda, and engaging the process of automation and scaling up to develop large scale data sets using machine learning approaches.
Resources for Empirical Research
- HLS Library Empirical Research Service
- Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Research (IQSS)
- Harvard Committee on the Use of Human Subjects
- Qualtrics Harvard
- Harvard Kennedy School Behavioral Insights Group
Past HELS Sessions
Holger Spamann (Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law) – How to Read Quantitative Empirical Legal Scholarship?
Katerina Linos (Professor of Law at UC Berkeley School of Law) – Qualitative Methods for Law Review Writing
Aziza Ahmed (Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law) – Risk and Rage: How Feminists Transformed the Law and Science of AIDS
Amy Kapczynski and Yochai Benkler –(Professor of Law at Yale; Professor of Law at Harvard) Law & Political Economy and the Question of Method
Jessica Silbey – (Boston University School of Law) Ethnography in Legal Scholarship
Roberto Tallarita – (Lecturer on Law, and Associate Director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard) The Limits of Portfolio Primacy
Susan S. Silbey – (Leon and Anne Goldberg Professor of Humanities, Sociology and Anthropology at MIT) HELS with Susan Silbey: Analyzing Ethnographic Data and Producting New Theory
Cass R. Sunstein (University Professor at Harvard) – Optimal Sludge? The Price of Program Integrity
Scott L. Cummings (Professor of Legal Ethics and Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law) – The Making of Public Interest Lawyers
Elliot Ash (Assistant Professor of Law, Economics, and Data Science at ETH Zürich) – Gender Attitudes in the Judiciary: Evidence from U.S. Circuit Courts
Kathleen Thelen (Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT) – Employer Organization in the United States: Historical Legacies and the Long Shadow of the American Courts
Omer Kimhi (Associate Professor at Haifa University Law School) – Caught In a Circle of Debt – Consumer Bankruptcy Discharge and Its Aftereffects
Suresh Naidu (Professor in Economics and International and Public Affairs, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs) – Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice
Vardit Ravitsky (Full Professor at the Bioethics Program, School of Public Health, University of Montreal) – Empirical Bioethics: The Example of Research on Prenatal Testing
Johnnie Lotesta (Postdoctoral Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School) – Opinion Crafting and the Making of U.S. Labor Law in the States
David Hagmann (Harvard Kennedy School) – The Agent-Selection Dilemma in Distributive Bargaining
Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard Law School) – Rear Visibility and Some Problems for Economic Analysis (with Particular Reference to Experience Goods)
Talia Gillis (Ph.D. Candidate and S.J.D. Candidate, Harvard Business School and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Law School) – False Dreams of Algorithmic Fairness: The Case of Credit Pricing
Tzachi Raz (Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at Harvard University) – There’s No Such Thing as Free Land: The Homestead Act and Economic Development
Crystal Yang (Harvard Law School) – Fear and the Safety Net: Evidence from Secure Communities
Adaner Usmani (Harvard Sociology) – The Origins of Mass Incarceration
Jim Greiner (Harvard Law School) – Randomized Control Trials in the Legal Profession
Talia Shiff (Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and Department of Sociology, Harvard University) – Legal Standards and Moral Worth in Frontline Decision-Making: Evaluations of Victimization in US Asylum Determinations
Francesca Gino (Harvard Business School) – Rebel Talent
Joscha Legewie (Department of Sociology, Harvard University) – The Effects of Policing on Educational Outcomes and Health of Minority Youth
Ryan D. Enos (Department of Government, Harvard University) – The Space Between Us: Social Geography and Politics
Katerina Linos (Berkeley Law, University of California) – How Technology Transforms Refugee Law
Roie Hauser (Visiting Researcher at the Program on Corporate Governance, Harvard Law School) – Term Length and the Role of Independent Directors in Acquisitions
Anina Schwarzenbach (Fellow, National Security Program, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School) – A Challenge to Legitimacy: Effects of Stop-and-Search Police Contacts on Young People’s Relations with the Police
Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard Law School) – Willingness to Pay to Use Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat, and More: A National Survey
Netta Barak-Corren (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) – The War Within
James Greiner & Holger Spamann (Harvard Law School) – Panel: Why Does the Legal Profession Resist Rigorous Empiricism?
Mila Versteeg (University of Virginia School of Law) (with Adam Chilton) – Do Constitutional Rights Make a Difference?
Susan S. Silbey (MIT Department of Anthropology) (with Patricia Ewick) – The Common Place of Law
Holger Spamann (Harvard Law School) – Empirical Legal Studies: What They Are and How NOT to Do Them
Arevik Avedian (Harvard Law School) – How to Read an Empirical Paper in Law
James Greiner (Harvard Law School) – Randomized Experiments in the Law
Robert MacCoun (Stanford Law School) – Coping with Rapidly Changing Standards and Practices in the Empirical Sciences (including ELS)
Mario Small (Harvard Department of Sociology) – Qualitative Research in the Big Data Era
Adam Chilton (University of Chicago Law School) – Trade Openness and Antitrust Law
Jennifer Lerner (Harvard Kennedy School and Department of Psychology) – Anger in Legal Decision Making
Sarah Dryden-Peterson (Harvard Graduate School of Education) – Respect, Reciprocity, and Relationships in Interview-Based Research
Charles Wang (Harvard Business School) – Natural Experiments and Court Rulings
Guhan Subramanian (Harvard Law School) – Determining Fair Value
James Greiner (Harvard Law School) – Randomized Control Trials and the Impact of Legal Aid
Maya Sen (Harvard Kennedy School) – The Political Ideologies of Law Clerks and their Judges
Daria Roithmayr (University of Southern California Law School) – The Dynamics of Police Violence
Crystal Yang (Harvard Law School) – Empiricism in the Service of Criminal Law and Theory
Oren Bar-Gill (Harvard Law School) – Is Empirical Legal Studies Changing Law and Economics?
Elizabeth Linos (Harvard Kennedy School; VP, Head of Research and Evaluation, North America, Behavioral Insights Team) – Behavioral Law and Economics in Action: BIT, BIG, and the policymaking of choice architecture
Meira Levinson (Harvard School of Education) – Justice in Schools: Qualitative Sociological Research and Normative Ethics in Schools
Howell Jackson (HLS) – Cost-Benefit Analysis
Michael Heise (Cornell Law School) – Quantitative Research in Law: An Introductory Workshop
Susan Silbey (MIT) – Interviews: An Introductory Workshop
Kevin Quinn (UC Berkeley) – Quantifying Judicial Decisions
Holger Spamman (Harvard Law School) – Comparative Empirical Research
James Greiner (Harvard Law School) – Randomized Controlled Trials in the Research of Legal Problems
Michael Heise (Cornell Law School) – Quantitative Research in Law
James Greiner (Harvard Law School) – A Typology of Empirical Methods in Law
David Wilkins (Harvard Law School) – Mixed Methods Work and the Legal Profession
Tom Tyler (Yale Law School) – Fairness and Policing
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Empirical Legal Studies
Research methods.
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Finding and interpreting legal texts are core skills for lawyers. If your research project is finding statutes, cases, and secondary sources discussing them, that's familiar territory. But if you want to construct a sound survey instrument and then apply statistical methods to draw information from the results, you probably need to develop some new skills.
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This page contains a selected list of major treatises on conducting empirical legal research, as well as a selection of books that demonstrate how some scholars use empirical legal research in their writing. You may find more works on the topic using subject headings, such as "legal research -- methodology," in Searchworks , the Stanford Library catalog.
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Statistics and Empirical Legal Studies Research Guide
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In this section, we briefly describe the empirical research process. This description is a summary based on a few sources that together provide much more detail about the process than this guide:
- Lee Epstein & Gary King, The Rules of Inference, 69 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1 (2002)
- Lee Epstein & Andrew D. Martin, An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research (2014)
- Mark A. Hall & Ronald F. Wright, Systematic Content Analysis of Judicial Opinions, 96 Calif. L. Rev. 63 (2008).
- Robert M. Lawless et al., Empirical Methods in Law (2d ed. 2016)
- Sarah E. Ryan, Teaching Empirical Legal Research Study Design: Topics & Resources, 23 Perspectives 152 (2015)
Other detailed sources on methodology are presented in the Resources on Empirical Research Methodology portion of this guide.
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Empirical legal studies ... is an approach to the study of law, legal procedure, and legal theory through the use of empirical research. Empirical legal researchers use research techniques that are typical of economics, psychology, and ... (NLR), which embrace qualitative and quantitative social science methods, as well as mixed method approaches.
The phrase "empirical legal research" in the title, The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research, is designed both to reflect and to celebrate the healthy pluralism of empirical approaches to the study of law and legal phenomena. Keywords: empirical legal studies, empirical investigation, legal systems, ELS movement, policing.
Abstract. This article deals with the qualitative approach to empirical studies. This approach is presumed to be closer to the social sciences. Data collection in the qualitative approach follows a combination of these three methods—direct observations, in-depth interviews, and document analysis.
Overview. The Harvard Empirical Legal Studies (HELS) Series explores a range of empirical methods, both qualitative and quantitative, and their application in legal scholarship in different areas of the law.It is a platform for engaging with current empirical research, hearing from leading scholars working in a variety of fields, and developing ideas and empirical projects.
Empirical Methods in Law by Robert M. Lawless; Jennifer K. Robbennolt; Thomas S. Ulen Empirical Methods in Law brings the basic principles and concepts of social-science research to the desks of law students and lawyers who expect to work with data experts. Now available in a second edition, the updated text continues its focus on explaining basic principles and concepts in an intuitive style ...
The phrase "empirical legal research" in the title, The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research, is designed both to reflect and to celebrate the healthy pluralism of empirical approaches to the study of law and legal phenomena. American legal realists were, perhaps, the first to appreciate the value and importance of, and to promote ...
2021-2022 Autumn. Empirical Legal Studies: Research Design (7510): Empirical legal studies have become trendy in the U.S. and are now spreading to law faculties in other countries as well. The popular image of an empirical study is that it involves sophisticated statistical analysis of quantitative data. Often the author of the study starts ...
A research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. ... the " ELS blog serves as an online forum to discuss and provide links for emerging empirical legal scholarship, provide conference updates, discuss empirical claims that have emerged in public and political discourse, facilitate ...
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (JELS) fills a gap in the legal and social science literature that has often left scholars, lawyers, and policymakers without basic knowledge of legal systems.Always timely and provocative, studies published in JELS have been covered in leading news outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes Magazine, the Financial ...
Empirical Legal Studies uses data analysis to study the legal system. Empirical Legal Studies is comprised of the body of scholarly research in this field, the methods employed to conduct this research, and the application of this research.
Analyzing legal texts such as judicial opinions and statutes is an extremely common activity in empirical legal research, and therefore deserves more attention here than the other three methods of gathering or generating data. Text analysis is one example of the broader technique known as "content analysis," and involves "collect[ing] a set of ...
Overview. This guide introduces selective resources and tools for conducting empirical legal research. These resources include: Statistics and Datasets: Resources available that collect statistical information. Journals and law reviews: Scholarly publications focused on empirical legal research. Treatises: Texts explaining and incorporating ...
Introduces empirical research methodology in a legal context, explaining how empirical analysis can inform legal arguments and how lawyers can set about framing empirical questions, conducting empirical research, analyzing data, and presenting or evaluating the results.
Finding and interpreting legal texts are core skills for lawyers. If your research project is finding statutes, cases, and secondary sources discussing them, that's familiar territory. But if you want to construct a sound survey instrument and then apply statistical methods to draw information from the results, you probably need to develop some ...
legal research, including black-letter legal research, empirical research, and international and comparative legal research. Given the complexities of each of these research methodologies, it is impos-sible to cover all approaches or methods of research within one text. However,
Summary "Research Methods for Empirical Legal Studies gives an overview of methods for empirical legal research. It begins with general methodological issues, such as reliability and validity as well as research ethics. Subsequently, the book discusses data collection: sampling, interviewing, observation and survey instruments, and research design.
This chapter discusses the use and merits of empirical legal research as an evidence-based method of conducting research that systematically carries out the task of unearthing, analysing, and interpreting facts in relation to law and its functioning. ... Idea and Methods of Legal Research. P. Ishwara Bhat, Oxford University Press (2019 ...
Quantitative methods dominate in empirical legal research, but an important segment of the field draws on qualitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews and observation. In this book both methodologies are explored alongside systematic data analysis. Offering an overview of the broad ELR literature, the institutions of the law, the ...
This article considers the contribution to legal scholarship which has been and is being made by research strategies which fall under the broad heading of 'empirical'. Empirical research in law involves the study, through direct methods rather than secondary sources, of the institutions, rules, procedures, and personnel of the law, with a ...
Lee Epstein & Andrew D. Martin, An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research (2014) Mark A. Hall & Ronald F. Wright, Systematic Content Analysis of Judicial Opinions, 96 Calif. L. Rev. 63 (2008). Robert M. Lawless et al., Empirical Methods in Law (2d ed. 2016)
empirical researchers about what method is best in an absolute sense. Sometimes, a highly theoretical, Methodology of Legal Research quality of legal research by Willem van Boom & Rob van Gestel.17 This is important, as regards content, as Utrecht Law Review of legal research.
'This textbook is a very accessible and practical guide to empirical legal research. The non-technical explanations of interviews, surveys and experiments make it easy to understand the pros and cons of each method and to know when to use them. It will be perfect as a textbook in an interdisciplinary methods course for law students.' - Sanne Taekema, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the ...
T he title of this Chapter seems too wordy. Why call it doing "empirical legal research," and not simply doing "empirical research"? After all, regardless of whether empirical researchers are addressing a legal question or any other, they follow the same rules—the rules that enable them to draw inferences from the data they have collected (Epstein and King, 2002; King et al., 1994).