Empirical Legal Studies

CELS 2019--Conference Schedule

Co-sponsored by Claremont McKenna College and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS), the 14th annual CELS 2019 conference schedule is here.

Call For Papers: Conference on Empirical Legal Studies–Europe 2020

Evidencing the growing internationalization of empirical legal studies, the 3rd Conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Europe (CELSE) will be held at the University of Oslo, 11-12 June 2020.

"CELSE is an interdisciplinary gathering that draws researchers from across Europe and the world, bringing together scholars in law, economics, political science, psychology, policy analysis, and other fields who are interested in the empirical analysis of law and legal institutions. CELSE will consider empirical papers across all areas of law, although priority will be given to papers with a European focus. Empirical analysis is understood to encompass any systematic approach to quantitative or qualitative data analysis, including statistical analysis, machine learning, experiments, text-mining and network analysis techniques.

Papers are selected through a peer review process, and discussion at the conference includes assigned commentators and audience questions. Authors are encouraged to submit works-in-progress; however, submissions should be completed drafts that include principal results. Submitted papers must be unpublished (and expected to be unpublished at the time of the conference). If accepted, authors will have an opportunity to submit a revised draft prior to the conference for presentation and discussion. Please note that accepted papers will be made available to all conference participants."

The deadline for submissions is 15 February 2020. Anyone with additional questions or seeking further information should click here.

ComplianceNet 2020 Conference--Call for Submissions

Yuval Feldman (Bar-Ilan, Israel) asked us to circulation information about the forthcoming ComplianceNet 2020 conference and we are, of course, delighted to do just that. Those interested should note the 1/24/2020 submission deadline.

The ComplianceNet 2020 conference will take place on June 29 – 30, 2020, and will be hosted by the University College London (UCL) School of Public Policy/Department of Political Science and the UCL Global Governance Institute. We are currently accepting panel or paper submissions, with a submission deadline of January 24, 2020.

ComplianceNet conferences seek to bring together scholars from a range of different disciplines to study the interaction between rules and human behaviour, broadly defined. The first two conferences were highly successful and brought together academics from business, criminology, economics, law, political science, psychology and sociology, among other fields. ComplianceNet’s website includes information about its structure and goals (click here) as well as the 2020 conference (click here).

QuantLaw 2020--Univ. Arizona College of Law--Call for Abstracts

As a fan--and proponent--of various genres of the "micro-conference" (that is, a 1-2 day topically/thematically-focused conference marked by an emphasis on scholarship by a limited number of junior scholars, a low-ratio of senior-to-junior scholars, and a prevailing norm/expectation that all participants read all presented work prior to the conference), I am delighted to pass along the following (excerpted) information about the upcoming 2020 iteration of Arizona's successful QuantLaw conference from Jane Bambauer (Arizona).

"The 2020 QuantLaw conference will take place February 27-28 (Thursday and Friday) in Tucson, Arizona. QuantLaw is a unique conference for scholars who apply empirical methods to the study of law. The program is both rigorous and laid back. Part of the QuantLaw program involves standard presentations of works-in-progress by our keynote speakers, by our returning ["senior"] gurus, and by faculty members and graduate students from many different disciplines. The rest of the program is designed to be an incubator. We will have a structured conversation over dinner one night that focuses on a methodological or philosophical topic related to empirical legal studies, and we will also discuss brand new works-in-progress while hiking in the beautiful Sonoran Desert.

QuantLaw 2020 will feature programming around the theme of experiments: experimental methods, and how best to combine experimental and observational data to get a more accurate picture. Kathryn Zeller (Boston University) will present a keynote address.

If you would like to present new empirical work related to law or public policy, please prepare an extended abstract (approximately 500-1000 words in length) describing the topic, the tested hypothesis, the methods you plan to use, and whether you expect to have results to share at the conference. Send your extended abstract and a current CV to Prof. Jane Bambauer (click here for contact info) by November 30, 2019. We will give preference to projects using experimental methods given this year’s theme. We will also give preference to graduate students and junior faculty members. Applicants who are selected to present will receive boarding accommodations in Tucson."

Again, those with questions or seeking additional information should contact Prof. Bambauer directly.

Graphing Counterfactual Regression Trend Lines

In a recent Statlist discussion (here), the question was posed about how to: "generate a graph to show how to the GDP per capita trend line would have continued if the conflict [or any discrete event] had not occurred." (emphasis added) Put slightly differently, the question involves how to over-lay two separate time-trend lines: one from actual data reflecting the influence of a discrete event and another trend line reflecting a counterfactual regression trend (that is, as if the discrete event did not happen).

To illustrate, the graph (above) plots and compares "the effect that the civil conflict in Mozambique and Rwanda have had on the GDP per capita growth in the long run" and over-lays a projected regression line reflecting GDP per capita assuming that the civil conflict did not emerge in these two countries.

While the Stata graphics coding can be tricky, the end result is a quickly interpretable graph.