Empirical Legal Studies

Sources and Books for Empirical Research

As you may recall, Bill Henderson and I had a couple of posts expounding the virtues of the Sage monograph series on "Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences" several weeks back.  It is a great starter series (though expensive for the whole thing) for anyone looking to enter empirical research with or without a quantitative background.  The library here at Minnesota has asked me to help build the collection of empirical and quantitative resource materials, and I am wondering whether anyone has any suggestions about "must have" books in the area?  I have already recommended that the library order a number of selections, including from the Sage Series, but I don't want to miss any important books in the field.  Your comments, as always, are most welcome.

The New Economics of Survey Research

I am a member of the Indiana State Bar Association and part of the organizing committee for the Annual Solo & Small Firm Conference.   I got involved with this effort several years ago when I attended the annual conference in preparation for my Law Firms course.  It is a remarkable group of professionals who have taught me a lot about the many soft and hard skills necessary to build a successful and satisfying law practice.   Therefore, when the group asked me to conduct a member survey of financial and billing practices, I was happy to reciprocate.

But here is the hitch:  we did not have much of a budget.   Remarkably, thanks to a wonderful web utility called SurveyMonkey.com, lack of funding is becoming less of an obstacle for survey research.   Here is a copy of my 35 question survey to ISBA members, which was approved by Indiana University's IRB committee (as a side note, my total time allocation to get IRB approval was eight hours--far from a horror story).   Responses to the survey were generated via an email from the ISBA Executive Director that solicited member participation.  That email contained a link to the Study Information Sheet (an IRB requirement), which was hosted on the ISBA website.  A link to the actual survey was placed at the bottom of the Study Information Sheet.

For a whopping $360 (for a full-year premium service subscription) payable to SurveyMonkey.com, I got the following:

• A wonderful survey tool with easy-to-use drop down menus;
• A secure, encrypted Internet connection for each survey respondent (without this option, the price drops to $240);
• The ability to view preliminary results in real time;
• A large digital file of results that could be readily imported into Excel, SSPS, Stata, or another statistical program;
• 1,280 respondents.

Frankly, it is too early to tell whether our solicitation method produced a biased sample.  (And if so, we may be able to fix that through a weighting methodology based on what we know of the whole ISBA population.)  But the preliminary results are certainly encouraging.  The new economics of survey research made this possible.    FYI, if I used the Indiana University Survey Center to conduct this poll, the total cost would have been in excess of $8,000. 

New Contract Law Collection

Economics Of Contract Law
Edited by Douglas G. Baird (Edward Elgar 2007)

At $275.00 retail, this collection of previously published articles is not exactly priced for the individual book buyer, but check out the library's copy for Baird's introduction to the topic and his selection of greatest hits.

The publisher's listing is here. The table of contents is after the break.

Thank You

I would just like to thank Bill and the rest of the ELS folks for the kind invitation to join the blog as a permanent editor.  I look forward in the coming weeks and months to posing questions similar to those that I have advanced over the past two weeks, to cross-post to SCOTUSblog.com occasionally on Supreme Court-related issues , and to ask your advice on my empirical projects and those of my colleagues and students in both the political science department and law school here at the University of Minnesota.  I also would love to hear about your experiences in conducting empirical research, and in that regard, please feel free to e-mail me if there are any issues that you would like for me to raise on this blog.  I anticipate that, through even informal collaboration on this blog, we will all turn out better quality empirical work in the future.

David Stras Joins the ELS Blog

The Empirical Legal Studies Blog is pleased to announce the addition of David Stras as a permanent editor.  David is an Associate Professor of University of Minnesota Law School and teaches courses in criminal law, federal courts, constitutional law, and law & economics.  He holds B.A, M.B.A., and J.D. degrees from the University of Kansas, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review. 

David is empiricist who leverages his institutional knowledge and work experience to ask new and relevant questions on the deliberations and functioning of the federal courts.  David has served as a law clerk to The Honorable Melvin Brunetti (9th Circuit), The Honorable J. Michael Luttig (4th Circuit), and Justice Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.  In addition, he worked as an appellate lawyer for Sidley Austin Brown & Wood.    Dave is also a regular contributor to the SCOTUSBlog and editor of the SSRN Law & Politics Series.

We look forward to David's thoughtful and informative posts.  David, welcome aboard!

Gendered Pay or Choices?

Joni Hersch (Vanderbilt Law & Econ) recently circulated an intriguing paper assessing whether gender discrimination can be dismissed as an explanation for pay disparity between men and women.  Indeed, the title of her paper, Sex Discrimination in the Labor Market, gives away the thrust of her argument.  An excerpt from the abstract follows.

"The main issue considered in this paper is whether gender differences in choices, especially with respect to the family and household, are indeed responsible for the gender pay gap, or whether discrimination plays a role. On balance, the evidence indicates that sex discrimination remains a possible explanation of the unexplained gender pay gap. This is consistent with the continuing high profile sex discrimination litigation suggestive of on-going inferior treatment on the basis of sex."

Law & Social Science: A Comparative Approach

In the last few weeks, we have listed some very attractive opportunities for ELS-related education opportunities over the summer.  Here is another one: 

Cornell Law School and the Universite Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne are cosponsoring their fourteenth annual Paris Summer Institute, a five-week academic program in international and comparative law.  The course are ABA-accredited and taught in English.  This year there are a dozen course offerings, including "Law & Social Science: A Comparative Approach," which will be taught by Valerie Hans (Cornell Law). 

The course will examine how social science expertise is employed in legal cases in multiple countries.  It will also address how common law and civil traditions, the diversity of legal procedures, and the range of legal cultures affect the use and impact of social science in law.

Thank You and Goodbye

Although I have not had much time to post this week, I want to thank Jason and the rest of the ELS crew for a wonderfully productive and interesting experience over the past two weeks.  Many thanks also go to those who took the time to read and make thoughtful comments to my posts.

ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques

Rebecca Morton (NYU Dept. of Politics) has asked us to post the following announcement, which appears to be European counterpart to the ICPSR Summer Program:

The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) is pleased to organize the second edition of the ECPR Summer School in Methods and Techniques, in cooperation with the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), from 19 July to 4 August 2007. It is targeted at advanced students (Master, beginning Ph.D) and junior researchers in political science and sociology, but students and researchers from all social and behavioural sciences are most welcome.

The aim of the summer school is to provide methods training opportunities in addition to MA and PhD curricula at European universities and to foster debate, interaction, and mutual understanding between various methodological perspectives at an early stage in academic careers. The curriculum covers introductory and intermediate courses in both quantitative and qualitative methods, also stemming from different ontological and methodological perspectives, and also features some plenary interactive events and debates, so as to increase alertness of young researchers to other methodological perspectives and possibilities. Some ECTS credits (3 or 5) can also be earned for the main, two-week courses.

The programme has been expanded to 4 intensive courses and 15 main, two-week courses.  The 4 Intensive courses (three days: 19 July - 21 July 2007) are:  1. Inferential statistics; 2. Basic concepts of mathematics; 3. Introduction to SPSS; 4. Introduction to R.

The 15 Main courses (two weeks: 23 July - 4 August 2007) are:  5. Mathematical concepts and formal modelling;; 6. Generating 'qualitative' data: expert interviews and documentary sources;  7. Comparative survey design;  8. The statistical analysis of cross-national survey data;  9. Multiple regression analysis;  10. Political and policy ethnography;  11. Quantitative narrative analysis;  12. Comparative research design and configurational comparative methods;  13. Network analysis;  14. Qualitatively orientated textual analysis;  15. Online research methods;  16. Temporality and sequence analysis;  17. Mixed methods design;  18. Multilevel analysis ; 19. Methodologies of case studies.

Full information is available on the official Summer school website.  Registration to each course is accepted on "first come, first serve" basis.

The Underutilization of Descriptive and Basic Inferential Statistics?

I would like to thank the readers of ELS for the excellent comments thus far to my previous posts.  In this post, I want to raise an issue that I have been thinking about for quite some time.  Although not every project or issue can be appropriately analyzed using descriptive or basic inferential statistics, it seems to me that many empirical scholars (both within the legal academy and outside of it) underestimate the value of using basic statistics to explain phenomena or relationships between variables.  Instead, empirical scholars often look for the most complex models, which result in papers that are impenetrable for non-quantitative scholars, rather than searching for ways to present the data in a fashion that can be understood by a wider audience. 

As someone who sits on dissertation committees in other disciplines on occasion and tries to attend workshops in political science as much as possible, I notice this trend among graduate students as well: in a zest to conform to the norms of their discipline, graduate students will sometimes forget that there can be enormous (and sometimes more!) value to presenting the data using basic statistical techniques.  If we, as empirical scholars, want to reach a wider audience for our work, is it worthwhile to simplify the empirical papers that we write when possible?  Is reaching a wider audience even a worthwhile goal?  Would courts and policymakers pay more attention to our scholarship if they could understand it?  Again, I realize that not every project lends itself to simple statistical techniques, but I thought these questions worth asking nonetheless.  As always, your comments are most welcome.