Empirical Legal Studies

Interesting Thoughts on Judicial Tenure

See here.

How Do We Know?

Over the past week or so I have been slogging through a stack of texts I am considering adopting for the introductory course on research methods (which includes some epistemology of science, research design, basic statistics) taught in my department each fall for first-year graduate students. This is the first time I will be teaching this course so the choice of text(s) looms particularly large. And, to complicate matters, we have recently added an an introduction to formal modeling course in the second semester for our graduate students, which they will take in addition to a course on statistics (beyond that which is covered in the first-semester course). So, I am very cognizant that what I cover in the first-semester course needs to give students preparation for not one but two courses they will take in their second semester. (I expect that neither of my colleagues who will be teaching those second-semester courses will find the students as prepared as they would like them to be but, being good natured folks, I am sure they will be patient with both the students and me.) I think that the sort of issues with which I am grappling in (re)designing this course are issues that speak more broadly to what it is that those interested in empirical legal studies care about. Let me (hopefully) provoke a discussion by offering a two guiding principles on which I am relying:

Contest: A Tournament of Party Strategies

James Fowler (U.C. Davis) and Michael Laver (NYU) are sponsoring a spatial modeling contest involving party electoral strategies. The prize for the most successful strategy is $1,000.  Entries must be received by April 15, 2006.

New Syllabus - Qualitative Research Methods

Recent guest blogger Artemus Ward has added his Qualitative Research Methods syllabus to the Society for Political Methodology's syllabus collection.

Guest Blogger: Wendy Martinek

Introducing our Next Guest Blogger: Professor Wendy L. Martinek (Binghamton) specializes in the study of judicial politics, with a particular interest in the judicial selection politics at the federal level and decision making in both the United States Courts of Appeals and state courts of last resort. Her current research program includes a project examining amicus curiae in the United States Courts of Appeals.

In addition to her focus on judicial politics, Professor Martinek has complementary interests in American political institutions, interest groups, state politics, and political methodology. Her research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Social Science Quarterly, American Politics Review, Party Politics, and Justice System Journal. Her book, Judging on a Collegial Court: Influences on Federal Appellate Decision Making, with Virginia A. Hettinger and Stefanie A. Lindquist is forthcoming with the University of Virginia Press.

Dining with Chief Justice Burger

If you liked our blog forum about researching law clerks and law clerk confidentiality, Joseph Zengerle, who clerked for Chief Justice Burger in October Term 1973, has written "Changing of the Chiefs."  9 Green Bag 2d 175.  (Note: The Green Bag is one of the few journals worth reading back to front.)   The article is not yet up on the Green Bag website, but I suspect it will be soon.  The article briefly discusses Zengerle's deliberations with CJ Burger regarding Cleveland Bd. of Ed. v. LaFleur, 414 U.S. 632 (1974), and spends significant time describing the annual dinner of the WEB Fete Society.

"A Gentle Introduction to Stata"

Adding to our discussion of useful statistical texts for students and new users, Alan Acock has written A Gentle Introduction to Stata, being sold as "an ideal book for students and for those with experience with other software packages but new to Stata."

A New ELS Blog Motto

Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions writes :

"The ELSblog has been on fire recently, including posts on law clerk loyalty and legal research; IRB Boards; the relationship between empirical work and theory; and a little dip into the old student-review incompetence debate. Based on quality-of-post, the blog should be getting more hits than it does. I'm thinking that their current motto ("advancing productive interdisciplinary discourse among empirical legal scholars") is a little unwelcoming. But otherwise, they are doing neat work. Go check 'em out!"

First Dave, thanks for the kind words!  Second, I'm now taking suggestions:  What should our new motto be?  I look forward to comments.

Full Circle

And so we've come full circle.  I began the week asking how best to operationalize the law.  My most recent post on the Attitudinal Model generated much discussion over how much that explanation of decision making leaves wanting.  So, what's the alternative?  Harold Spaeth is himself the first to say (at least to me) that if someone can demonstrate a "better" way to explain Supreme Court voting behavior, he's all ears.  That means, of course, that he's looking for an empirical, falsifiable, hypothesis-based demonstration that there is something else that systematically, significantly, and substantively affects Supreme Court decision making.  And so I ask again, what is the alternative?  Is law a "nuisance" as Zorn describes it (drinking wine and crashing into tables, no less!!), or are there systematic components to the law that we might operationalize and include in our models of Supreme Court decision making?  If attitudes are the best predictor of votes (regardless of how much they actually are able to predict, alone or with facts), then isn't that still a pretty major and useful contribution?  And does anyone have something in mind that does better?

So, coming full circle is a nice way to end my week as "Guest Blogger!"  Thanks for your interest and attention!

Normative Implications of the Attitudinal Model

I am a social scientist.  Therefore, whenever anyone says the word "normative," I squirm.  I'll admit it.  But I have been thinking, lately, about some of the normative implications of widespread knowledge of the attitudinal model of judicial decision making.  The Law and Courts Listserv has been exchanging instances of hostility toward judges:  Justice Ginsburg's internet death threats for reliance on foreign sources of law; the movement to seize Justice Souter's property in New Hampshire; the new "J.A.I.L 4 Judges" Amendment in South Dakota.  Add to that list Pat Robertson's comments on This Week that activist judges are as bad as the 9/11 terrorists; the Senate Majority Leader's statements over the Shiavo case regarding Congress' power over the federal courts; Sensennbrenner's letter to the 7th Circuit on a sentencing decision; and on and on.  (The Brennan Center, of course, does an excellent job of tracking these threats.)  What is going on in terms of our confidence in our judiciary and over the presumed benefits of judicial independence?