Empirical Legal Studies

Recent Additions to the Stata Instructional Video Collection

While I've discussed the Stata instructional videos previously, recent notable additions to the video collection include a helpful 3-part series on Introduction to Margins. The entire collection of instructional videos can be found here.

Call For Papers--2nd Annual Western Empirical Legal Studies (WELS) Conference at UCLA

Having just returned from another wildly successful CELS, I am delighted to pass along information from Joe Doherty (UCLA) about the 2nd Annual Western Empirical Legal Studies (WELS) Conference at UCLA. Insofar as WELS is consciously pitched to "law and graduate students," I believe it fills an important need and presents a wonderful opportunity for interested students. (Please note the 12.7.2012 proposal deadline.)

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Call for Papers: 2nd Annual Western Empirical Legal Studies (WELS) Conference at UCLA

Proposal Deadline: December 7, 2012.

The UCLA School of Law Empirical Legal Scholars Association (ELSA) is proud to announce the 2nd Annual Western Empirical Legal Studies Conference, to be held at UCLA on March 2, 2013.

WELS is a conference for law and graduate students that provides a unique opportunity for emerging ELS scholars to present their work in front of an audience of peers. The inaugural conference attracted participants from Europe and from seven universities and law schools across the U.S. If you are a professor who has students who might be interested in WELS, please pass this along.

For more information and instructions on submitting an abstract visit the conference website or contact the ELSA staff at: ELSA@lawnet.ucla.edu.

Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship Workshop, May 22-24, 2013

On Wednesday, May 22, 2013 through Friday, May 24, 2013, Lee Epstein and Andrew Martin will be teaching their annual Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship workshop. This workshop will be held in Los Angeles, and is co-sponsored by USC Gould School of Law and Washington University Law. There is more information available about the workshop here:

http://law.usc.edu/EmpiricalWorkshop

The Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship workshop is for law school and social science faculty interested in learning about empirical research. The instructors provide the formal training necessary to design, conduct, and assess empirical studies, and to use statistical software (Stata) to analyze and manage data. Participants need no background or knowledge of statistics to enroll in the workshop. Topics to be covered include research design, sampling, measurement, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and linear regression.

CELS 2012

Dan Ho (Stanford) has put together an outstanding Program for this year's conference. Event's begin later this morning with Ted Eisenberg's (Cornell) 10-hour empirical training workshop. Insofar as the Workshop proved quite popular (registration closed quickly due to participant demand), workshops will be planned for future CELS. In addition, Ted is presenting a similar workshop at AALS in January.

Hoffman on CELS 2012

Per tradition, Dave Hoffman (Temple) will blog (here) about CELS 2012.

Stata Instructional Videos

From the Stata blog: "StataCorp now provides free tutorial videos on StataCorp’s YouTube channel." A direct link to Stata's YouTube "channel" (here). This is, of course, a wonderful move by Stata. While the current collection of videos is limited, more are "forthcoming." My only quibble is that the videos are broken into quite small (and short) discrete sessions (thus far, 24 separate videos accounting for just under 2 hours of instruction). Any quibbles aside, well worth a look.

Big Data -- Georgetown Conference

Josh Teitelbaum (Georgetown) passed along the following conference (set for Mon. Oct. 29) announcement -- focusing on issues incident to "big data." Notably (and helpfully), a video of the conference will be available to those interested yet unable to attend.

Big Data and Big Challenges for Law and Legal Information: Georgetown Law Library – A Symposium in Celebration of 125 Years

The Georgetown Law Library invites you to a symposium in celebration of its 125th anniversary, Big Data and Big Challenges for Law and Legal Information, on October 29 at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC.

Throughout the day, panelists from the academic, advocacy, government, and library communities will discuss how very large or complex data sets can be used to develop new understandings and inform public policy – connecting points of information electronically, across numerous, vast, and often unrelated stores of data to distill meaning in ways impossible a few short years ago. Together, we will share ideas on the theory and practice of balancing privacy costs and public benefit, and the many incentives, practical applications, and new technologies implicated in the growth of big data.

Registration for the symposium is free and open to all, however space is limited. To register and view additional information, please click here.

If you are unable to attend, please note that a video recording will be available at this web address following the event.

More & Updated CELS 2012 Info

Stanford Law School and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies are pleased to announce the 7th annual:

Conference on Empirical Legal Studies

November 9-10, 2012

to be held at

Stanford Law School

Conference highlights include:

• Methods lectures by Trevor Hastie on data mining, Douglas Rivers on internet surveys, and Simon Jackman on Bayesian data analysis.
• A Keynote address by Ian Ayres, William K. Townsend Professor of Law, Yale Law School.
• Original empirical legal scholarship by leading scholars from a diverse range of fields.
• Preliminary schedule available here.

Prior to the conference, an (optional) empirical training workshop will be convened by Theodore Eisenberg.

To register and for more information about the conference, visit:

http://cels.stanford.edu

The registration deadline is October 26th.

Announcement: Visiting Scholars at The Center for the Study of Law and Society

The Center for the Study of Law and Society invites applications for visiting scholars for 2013-2014. The Center fosters empirical research and theoretical analysis concerning legal institutions, legal processes, legal change, and the social consequences of law. Closely linked to the School of Law, CSLS creates a multidisciplinary milieu with a faculty of distinguished socio-legal scholars in sociology of law, political science, criminal justice studies, law and economics, legal history, law and psychology, and legal and social philosophy, along with visiting socio-legal scholars from the United States and around the world.  

Among the benefits of being a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society are: library privileges at the Law School and at all campus libraries; invitation to our weekly Bag Lunch Speaker Series, workshops, and scholarly exchanges; UCB campus privileges, such as athletic facilities and permission to audit classes; and, when possible, assignment to shared or other office space and use of computer, internet, and other facilities.  The Center will consider applications for periods of time that vary from one month duration to the full academic year.  

The deadline for applications is November 16, 2012.  More information, including full details about the application process, is available here: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/1273.htm.

MPSA--Annual Conference & Call For Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS. 71st MPSA Political Science Conference, April 11-14, 2013. October 5th Proposal Deadline.

Please forward this email to colleagues or graduate students who may be interested in presenting at the 71st Annual MPSA Political Science Conference. There are more research papers are presented here than any other political science conference and many opportunities to meet with colleagues. The MPSA Conference has sections that cover many fields in social science that interact with political science. You do not need to be a member to submit a proposal or present a paper, but you do need to have an account (here).

The MPSA also publishes one of the top journals in the discipline, the American Journal of Political Science. The Editor of the AJPS is Rick Wilson (Rice University) and you can see the author guidelines and a virtual issue that looks at research funded by the National Science Foundation (here).