Empirical Legal Studies

A Quick "Margins" and "Marginsplot" Primer

Editors and referees (including, though with far less frequency, student law review editors) increasingly ask for more intuitive (and, frankly, visual) displays of empirical results. What presently dominates in the Stata world include the margins and marginsplot commands. And for anyone interested in seeing a few examples that illustrate how these two commands can, in Chuck Huber's words, "revolutionize" the presentation of regression (or other) results, I haven't come across anything more helpful than this quick video.

Data on Testacy and Intestacy in Florida

Filtered by my admitted soft spot for scholars who engage in the hard, unglamorous, and often under-appreciated tasks incident to data creation/collection, a recent paper taking an initial descriptive cut at some archival probate data caught my eye. In The Demographics of Intergenerational Transmission of Wealth: An Empirical Study of Testacy and Intestacy on Family Property, Danaya Wright (Florida), recognizing that "[e]veryone dies eventually, and the vast majority of us will die owning at least some property," digs into probate record archives to assess various trends. Exploiting all (N=408) estates that went through court-supervised probate in Alachua County (FL) in 2013, the paper focuses on such variables as wealth, age, number of children, race, sex and marital status, with an eye toward potential systematic differences between testate (293) and intestate (115) decedents. The paper reports "clear differences between testate and intestate decedents on the basis of race, sex, wealth, marital status, age, and even children, with testacy correlating to significantly more wealth than intestacy."

Appropriately mindful of data and research design limitations, the paper also conveys a welcome level of cautiousness and modesty in terms of its ability to scaffold firm conclusions. After all, the data used in the paper draw from one year (2013) in a single county in one state (FL). As well, while the paper benefits from all of estates submitted to probate, most (77.3%) of the deaths in Alachua County in 2013 did not trigger probate or were probated elsewhere. While important external validity and selection effects' questions linger, the paper nonetheless illustrates the scholarly potential of exploiting data that too often remain "hidden in plain sight." The paper's abstract follows.

“In this article, I analyze many of the differences between testate and intestate decedents and suggest areas of concern for law- and policy-makers, as well as practicing lawyers and financial planners. Identifying the right demographic at risk for wealth deterioration may allow for interventions that can slow or reverse the widening wealth gap and ultimately help the next few generations build economically stable lives. To that end, I discuss how a number of demographic differences (wealth, age, race, sex, and marital status) affect the downward trajectory of certain groups and the upward trajectory of others.”

Recent Update for User-Writen "stripplot"

"Longer-time" Stata users may recall (and have used) a user-written graphics command, stripplot. Old and new Stata users, however, should be aware that the stripplot command was recently updated and expanded to allow users to "compare distributions and a variety of displays is possible, including linear and stacked dot and strip plots, with in conjunction box plots or confidence intervals." To illustrate some possibilities, consider, e.g.,:

This facilitates, e.g., a side-by-side display of quantile plots combined with horizontal reference lines for means. For those interested, install with the ssc command. For more information, and examples, click here.

Data on Police Conduct and Civilian Oversight

Among the myriad of ideas for reforming police currently under debate, many call for greater oversight of police conduct in ways that increase civilian participation. Whether increased civilian oversight will generate the desired reductions in police misconduct without chilling effective policing, however, remains under-studied.

A recent paper by Kyle Rozema (Wash U) and Max Schanzenbch (Northwestern), Does Discipline Decrease Police Misconduct? Evidence from Chicago Civilian Allegations, makes a helpful contribution to the empirical void. Exploiting 1990-2015 officer-level data from Chicago, the paper implements "an officer-level event study to investigate how officer misconduct changes after a civilian allegation of misconduct is sustained." To this end the paper, presented at the 2019 CELS, implements a stacked event study approach to investigate how "officer misconduct changes after a civilian allegation of misconduct is sustained" and considers three possible mechanisms: (police) incapacitation, shirking, and improved conduct. What the authors find is that: "In terms of mechanisms, we found no evidence that this effect results from incapacitation, such as desk duty assignment, and no evidence that it results from chilling effective policing. Even though sustained allegations result in negligible suspensions, we found evidence that a sustained allegation has a detrimental impact on promotion and pay. We interpret the results as most consistent with improved officer conduct driven by specific or marginal deterrence. Consequently, our findings suggest that sustaining the marginal allegation will improve police conduct without affecting overall police effectiveness." The paper's abstract follows.

“Reformers are calling for greater oversight of police behavior, in part through enhanced use of civilian complaints. However, others counter that greater oversight could chill effective policing. We assess police officer response to administrative determinations of misconduct. Using Chicago data, we find strong evidence that a sustained allegation reduces that officer’s future misconduct. We find no evidence that this effect is driven by incapacitation, such as assignment to desk duty, or by officer disengagement with policing. We conclude that our findings are consistent with improved officer conduct, in part due to officer concerns over promotion, salary, and desirable assignments.”

Evidence of More Revolving Doors

"Revolving doors," evidently, are everywhere. While in a few sectors (e.g., financial regulators/financial services industries) research on revolving doors is well-developed, empirical research in other sectors is less so. The latter sectors include, e.g., an individual's path from a Supreme Court clerkship, to an appellate litigation group, and then back to the Supreme Court as an advocate. While "hunches" about this "revolving door" have persisted over time, data on former clerks' efficacy arguing in front of their former bosses remain scant. A recent paper, The Influence of Personalized Knowledge at the Supreme Court: How (Some) Former Law Clerks Have the Inside Track, exploits decisions in the Supreme Court Database between the 1979 and 2018 Terms and contributes to this data void. In their paper, political scientists Ryan Black (Mich. St.) and Ryan Owens (Wisc.) find evidence of an effect as the following figure implies.

The paper's abstract, summarizing core results, follows.

"When arguing at the U.S. Supreme Court, former High Court law clerks enjoy significant influence over their former justices. Our analysis of forty years of judicial votes reveals that an attorney who formerly clerked for a justice is 16 percent more likely to capture that justice’s vote than an otherwise identical attorney who never clerked. What is more, an attorney who formerly clerked for a justice is 14 to 16 percent more likely to capture that justice’s vote than an otherwise identical attorney who previously clerked for a different justice. Former clerk influence is substantial, targeted, and appears to come from clerks’ personalized information about their justices. These results answer an important empirical question about the role of attorneys while raising normative concerns over fairness in litigation."