Empirical Legal Studies

Predicting Justice

Over at Balkinization Ian Ayres (Yale) has a post that will interest those who study law and politics in general and judicial decision making in particular.

Practical, User-Friendly, Introductory "How-To" Book Suggestions for R

A colleague determined to conquer R (or at least become functionally fluent) bemoaned recently R's inaccessible documentation and obtuse manuals. To be sure, the price is right (R is free open-source), but she is now looking for suggestions on helpful, basic, and more user-friendly "How-To" books for R. As this is the Holiday season I agreed to pass along her request. Suggestions (and comments) welcome.

An "Interesting" T&E Research Idea ...

Over at PrawfsBlawg Dan Markel (Fl. St.), with tongue planted firmly in cheek (presumably, hopefully), identifies an interesting research opportunity (here) for empiricists in general and T&E scholars in particular. Gallows humor aside, Dan's post backs into an important point--the relative paucity of well-structured natural experimental research designs for legal scholars.

Greater Access to More Municipal Data Sets

Maya Sen, over at the Social Science Statistics Blog, posts about (with links) a wonderful emerging trend involving increased access to municipal-level data.

Legal Academic Hiring Market, JD/PhD Debate, and the "Empirical Revolution"

As usual, Dave Hoffman (Temple) raises some quite interesting points over at Concurring Opinions (and here).

Deadline for Philip D. Shelton Prize Nominations

The good folks at the Law School Admission Council's (LSAC) recently mentioned that the nomination deadline for the 2010 Shelton Prize consideration is 1 February 2010. It's nice to see such recognition for and attention to empirical legal research; salient information follows.

Philip D. Shelton Prize for Outstanding Legal Education Research

The Shelton Prize is for outstanding published empirical research related to legal education. The first prize of $5,000 will be awarded in 2009 for research published in 2008 or 2009. The winner(s) will be invited to present their work at the LSAC annual meeting, which will be held in Fort Lauderdale, FL, 2-5 June 2010. Winners will be announced in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Nominations are now being accepted for this prize. Please send a copy of the nominated article and brief information about the author(s) to:

Stephen T. Schreiber
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
LSAC
662 Penn Street
Newtown, PA  18940
[email protected]

Again, nominations must be received by no later than 1 February 2010 to be considered for the 2010 Shelton Prize.

Bringing Data To Copyright Theory

In Does Copyright Law Promote Creativity? An Empirical Analysis of Copyright's Bounty, the authors, Raymond Shih Ray Ku (Case Western, Law), Jiayang Sun (Case Western, Statistics), and Yiying Fan (Case Western, Statistics Grad Student), subject a core tenet of copyright theory to empirical testing. What they find might surprise. An excerpted abstract follows.

"Modern copyright law is based upon a theory: increase copyright protection and you increase the number of creative works available to society. ... In this Article, we use statistical analysis to test the theory that increasing copyright protection usually increases the number of new creative works. Relying upon U.S. copyright registrations from 1870 through 2006 as a proxy for the number of works created, we consider how four variables—population, the economy, legal changes, and technology—influenced subsequent copyright registrations. Our findings cast serious doubt on the idea that with copyright law, one size fits all. While individual legal changes may be associated with changes in subsequent copyright registrations, the overall relationship between changes in copyright law and registrations is neither consistent nor completely predictable."