Empirical Legal Studies

California Law Review "Rules" Against Empirical Submissions

Over at Concurring Opinions Dave Hoffman reacts to manuscript submission "requirements" at the California Law Review.  As Dave notes, requirements 4 and 5 could easily pose something of a problem for empirical pieces.  To be fair to the California Law Review, it is possible that these requirements are routinely waived or, simply, ignored.  Then again, maybe not. Regardless, such rules certainly convey a tone that will deflect some empirical manuscripts elsewhere.  Even for folks still inclined to publish in student-edited journals (rather than the growing number of faculty-edited, peer-reviewed journals), why bother with one that appears indifferent to empirical work? And, alas, maybe that is simply the outcome the editors' desire. Given the palpable trend in legal scholarship today toward empirical scholarship, however, CLR's submission requirements invite some level of risk to that Review.

Guns and Freedom, Pictures and Words

A few days ago, David Kopel posted on Volokh about a new paper he and coauthor Howard Nemerov have written.  The subject is the relationship between firearm ownership and "freedom and prosperity," the latter of which is measured through some widely-known indicators (Freedom House scores, Transparency International corruption ratings, World Bank prosperity scores, and the Heritage Foundation's economic freedom index). 

To their credit, the authors are extremely careful in their conclusions.  Examining data for 59 countries during the mid-2000s, the authors conclude that "(T)he highest national levels of gun ownership are associated with more political freedom, more civil liberty, much less corruption, and slightly more economic freedom."  They also note, however, that "the relationship is not universal," and go to pains to discuss the many ways in which their data -- particularly that on gun ownership -- may have problems.  Perhaps most interesting is their statement, based on a series of comparisons of means across groups defined by quartiles of gun ownership, that

(W)hile the first quartile is better in all categories, the relationship between firearms and freedom is not consistent among the lower three quartiles. For example, the second quartile is  slightly better for economic freedom, the third quartile is best for non-corruption, and the fourth  quartile is best for political/civil freedom. Thus, if there is some kind of cause-and-effect relationship between firearms and freedom (discussed infra), the effect appears to exist only for countries with high levels of firearms ownership. The effect does not appear evident between groups of countries with relatively low levels of firearms vs. countries with hardly any firearms.

Of course, the analysis is far from perfect, and several of the commenters at Volokh offer suggestions about how the authors might improve their analysis.  One suggestion -- with which I agree -- is to provide some graphs of the relationships among the variables they consider.  Since the authors are kind enough to make their data available in the paper, I decided to do just that:

The variables are all rescaled so that higher values are "better."  Green dots are countries Freedom House defines as "free," black ones are "partially free," and red ones are "not free;" dotted lines are linear fits, smooth ones are lowess lines, and the main diagonal has density plots for each variable.

The key points are the positive relationships  among freedom, transparency, etc.,  the somewhat  weaker relationships between those indicators and gun ownership, and  -- interestingly -- the strongest evidence for the authors'  "step function" idea in the relationship between firearm ownership and transparency.  Most important, though, is the fact that, particularly when it comes to data analysis, a picture really is worth a thousand (or more) words.

Small Businesses, Bankruptcy, and Workouts

Ed Morrison (Columbia) recently circulated a paper that will surely interest those partial to bankruptcy scholarship.  From the abstract:

"In the United States, few failing businesses invoke the Bankruptcy Code to reorganize or liquidate. Most use non-bankruptcy procedures to accomplish the same purposes. These procedures include voluntary agreements between the debtor and its creditors (workouts) and formal devices such as friendly foreclosures, bulk sales, and assignments for the benefit of creditors. This paper documents the importance of non-bankruptcy procedures using firm-level data from Cook County, Illinois. I find that these procedures are used by eighty percent of distressed small businesses. ... These findings suggest that federal bankruptcy reforms, such as the Bankruptcy Abuse and Protection Act of 2005, will have two effects on distressed small businesses: They will impact outcomes in federal courts (intensive margin) as well as the debtor's choice between bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy procedures (extensive margin). Variation along the extensive margin can neutralize reforms in federal law, as when a reform designed to protect unsecured creditors raises the cost of federal law and induces businesses to use cheaper non-bankruptcy procedures instead."

Critical Connections: Law, Education, Scholarship & Practice: Re-imagining Africa(ns) in light of Global Emigration & Neocolonialism

African Law Student Association, Columbia University and the Center for African Education, Teachers College, Columbia University present the symposium

Critical Connections: Law, Education, Scholarship & Practice: Re-imagining Africa(ns) in light of Global Emigration & Neocolonialism

Critical Connections is a one-day symposium created in collaboration between the Center for African Education, Teachers College and the African Law Student Association of Columbia Law School. The purpose of this symposium is to promote interdisciplinary engagement with the legal, educational, scholarly and practice-based issues affecting the African continent. This year we are paying particular attention to the effect of neo-colonialist policies on the emigration of African peoples on the continent and around the world. Specifically of interest are the connections between such policies and questions of discriminatory immigration laws and trade policies; the movement of refugee populations; xenophobia both in and out of the continent; the development of new legal norms reflecting African cultures and identities; education; the shifting of identities across generations and borders; and the health and well-being of Africans throughout the world.

We invite papers from established graduate students, practitioners, and community-based organizations in a wide variety of disciplines, including education, law, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, African(a) studies, policy, literature, economics, international development and cultural studies. Individual papers, posters and complete panels will be considered. Panels are strongly encouraged that reflect the collaboration between scholars and practitioners.

Those interested in presenting at the symposium should submit a 250-word abstract and a CV by Friday, March 10, 2008 via email to: Mojoyin Onijala, Chair of the Columbia African Law Student Association or Ramatu Bangura, Graduate Assistant at the Center for African Education at [email protected]. Abstracts can be sent via regular mail to the African Law Student Association, Columbia University, 435 West 116th St., New York, NY 10027-7297.

Critical Connections will be held at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York.

Data, anyone?

Slashdot reports that Carl Malamud (of EDGAR fame) has begun posting the full text of 1.8 million U.S. federal court opinions on-line, for free.  The data, scanned in from the Federal Reporter fiche, comprise every Supreme Court and Court of Appeals decision from 1950 to the present.  He's now in the process of getting them OCRd.   O'Reilly Radar tells the story as well.

Reports of OLS' Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

A recent (2.15.08) post over at the Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science blog includes a nice discussion of OLS' "stature" in the political science literature. The punchline is that: "OLS is not dead. On the contrary, it remains the principal multivariate technique in use by researchers publishing in our best journals."  Although increasingly often dismissed as "old school" (or passe), evidently OLS remains a mainstay in leading poli sci journals.

Constitutional Commentary

Our library just received the Spring 2007 issue of Constitutional Commentary, which contains a Symposium on The Rehnquist Court in Empirical and Statistical Perspective.  Among other pieces are an article co-authored by ELSBlog editors Jason Czarnezki and Bill Ford, along with Lori Ringhand, entitled An Empirical Analysis of the Confirmation Hearings of the Justices of the Rehnquist Natural Court, and Warren Court Precedents in the Rehnquist Court by Frank Cross (another ELSBlog editor), Thomas Smith, and Antonio Tomarchio.  Other articles include (1) When the Court Has a Party, How Many "Friends" Show Up? A Note on the Statistical Distribution of Amicus Brief Filings by Daniel Farber; (2) The Rhetoric of Restraint and the Ideology of Activism, by Stefanie Lindquist, Joseph Smith, and Frank Cross; (3) Judicial Activism: An Empirical Examinoation of Voting Behavior on the Rehnquist Natural Court, by Lori Ringhand; (4) The Most Dangerous Justice Rides into the Sunset, by Paul Edelman and Jim Chen; and (5) The Aggregate Harmony Metric and a Statistical and Visual Contextualization of the Rehnquist Court; 50 Years of Data, by Peter Hook.

Lott v. Levitt: Revised, Revised, Revised Briefing Schedule

Still no briefs filed. Here is the latest briefing schedule.

    Appellant's brief due 3/4/08 for John R. Lott.

    Appellees' brief due 4/3/08 for HarperCollins Publ, for Steven D. Levitt.

    Appellant's reply brief due 4/17/08 for John R. Lott.

New Publications From Sage

I'll begin by disclaiming any conflict of interest, financial or otherwise: I have no stake whatsoever in Sage. I do, however, own numerous Sage Publications--and have ever since graduate school--as I've found them unusually helpful for many (but not all) nitty-gritty statistics questions. A new Sage catalog of its Research, Statistics, and Quantitative Methods titles crossed my desk recently and I thought others might be interested.

New LSA Collaborative Research Network: Private Practice Lawyers

Over the last several months, I have been involved in an effort to pull together a group of scholars who are interested in the economics and sociology of the legal profession.  The Law Firms Working Group is part of this initiative.   Another step in this direction is the creation of a Law & Society Association Collaborative Research Network (CRN), "Private Practice Lawyers," which will complement existing CRNs on "Cause Lawyering" and "Transnational Lawyering."

During the LSA Annual Meeting in Montreal (May 29-June 1), this new CRN will sponsor nine panels with a total of 36 papers.  Here is the CRN description from the LSA website:

Over the last three decades, the proportion of legal work performed for the corporate legal sector has grown dramatically. This shift in employment patterns reflects a large and understudied sea change in the legal profession. The Collaborative Research Network studies the changing economics and sociology of private sector lawyers and law firms. Topics of interests to our researchers include: changing professional norms; labor markets; law firm management; the balance of power among interest groups (e.g., AAJ [formerly ALTA] versus the U.S. Chamber of Commerce); access to justice for the poor and middle class; the role of elite lawyers in the democratic process; the relationship between firm size, working conditions, professional autonomy, and lawyer satisfaction; and the viability of current models of self regulation. In addition to advancing scholarship on the legal profession, this CRN has two subsidiary goals: (1) creating and sharing of qualitative and quantitative data on private practice lawyers; (2) exploring the potential of socio-legal studies as teaching materials within law schools.

What is the longterm goal?  From my perspective, it is to operationalize socio-legal research on the legal profession into law school course material that helps young lawyers construct careers that better serve personal, professional, and societal goals.  If the organizational momentum continues, 20 years from now, every law school will have instructors who focus on the sociology and economics of the profession, not because of the winds of intellectual fashion but because applied social science has the potential to produce better results than good intentions plus folk wisdom.

For Better or Worse (or Both): Emerging Data on Blogs & Legal Scholarship

Over at Law Librarian Blog, Joe Hodnicki provides an empirical perspective on the assimilation of blogs into legal scholarship (here). Issues concerning the influence of blogs on legal scholarship continue to prompt discussion. A recent sampling includes comments by Jack Balkin (Yale) and Brian Leiter (Texas).

Lott v. Levitt: Revised-Revised 7th Circuit Briefing Schedule

The briefing schedule with the Seventh Circuit has changed again, and Lott has not yet filed his opening brief. The previous deadline was yesterday, February 1st. Here is the updated briefing schedule from the docket sheet:   

    Appellant's brief due 2/12/08 for John R. Lott

    Appellees' brief due 3/13/08 for HarperCollins Publ, for Steven D. Levitt

    Appellant's reply brief due 3/27/08 for John R. Lott