Empirical Legal Studies

More Thoughts on the Sage Series

I would like to first thank Jason and the rest of the ELS crew for inviting me as a guest blogger this week.   I hope to get my first substantive post up tomorrow about my thoughts on interdisciplinary legal scholarship, but I would first like to second Bill's observation about the quality and helpfulness of Sage's Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series.  For novice researchers trying to understand basic concepts relating to both linear and multivariate regression, I  recommend Larry Schroeder's Understanding Regression Analysis monograph.   For a slightly more advanced examination of regression, Michael Lewis Beck's Applied Regression monograph is also a wonderful resource.  A number of the other papers  deal with the nuances of descriptive statistics, such as Peter Chen's Correlation and Michael Lewis Beck's Data Analysis monographs. 

Although there are no doubt a number of useful resources for empirical researchers, I find the  offerings in the Sage series to be among the best and most diverse.  A researcher that has questions about confidence intervals, for example, can turn to a Sage monograph focused solely on that subject.  I have encouraged our librarians at the University of Minnesota to purchase a number of the offerings from Sage as I think they are an indispensable (and perhaps underutilized) tool for methodologically rigorous empirical scholarship.

Basic Math for Social Scientists

Thanks to feedback received from my earlier post on Survey Research, I purchased a few more books from the Sage Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series:  Arlene Fink, The Survey Kit (2002) and Graham Kalton, Introduction to Survey Sampling (1983).  These monographs are short and readable explanations for people interested in specific research methodologies or background theory.

While purchasing these books, I also bought another Sage monograph, Tim Hagle, Basic Math for Social Scientists: Concepts (1996), which arrived this morning.  As I have gotten deeper into empirical work, I really want to fully understand the math that is driving the Stata and SPSS regression models and diagnostic tools.

Fortunately, this little book by Hagle (who is a lawyer and a political scientist) turns out to be the book that I was one day hoping to find: a quick, nuts & bolts discussion of the important math concepts that underlie probability and multivariate regression:  algebra review of exponents and logarithms, limits and continuity, differential and integral calculus (which I have forgotten from college), matrix algebra, and eigenvalues and eigenvectors.  It also has a handy summary of math symbols and expressions. I am very happy with this purchase.

The 2007-08 Hylton Law School Rankings

Last year at this time, I posted the first incarnation of the Hylton Law School Rankings. "The Hylton Rankings rank American law schools in an order which reflects the way that they are regarded by law school professors and students. The Rankings are named for their compiler, Professor J. Gordon Hylton of Marquette University.... Unlike the US News ratings, the Hylton Rankings list law schools from #1 to #184."

Click here to view the 2007-08 Hylton Rankings

Guest Blogger: David Stras

This week's guest blogger is David Stras, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota.  Professor Stras teaches and writes in the areas of criminal law, federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law, and law and economics. His current research focuses on the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court of the United States.  Using a variety of methodological tools, including empirical and historical analyses, Professor Stras's research has examined a variety of issues relating to the Supreme Court.  Professor Stras is a frequent television and radio commentator on issues relating to the federal judiciary, particularly with respect to the Supreme Court of the United States.  He is also an adjunct faculty member of the University of Minnesota Political Science Department, and is the co-editor of a new SSRN journal on "Law and Politics." 

Professor Stras received his B.A. degree, with highest distinction, and his MBA from the University of Kansas. He received his law degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review. Following law school, Professor Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the Washington, D.C. office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In addition, he a frequent and regular contributor to SCOTUSblog.