Empirical Legal Studies

An Argument For Using Poisson (With Examples)

While wanting to avoid igniting something of a statistical holy war, I did want to point to an argument from the good folks at Stata for using poisson over log-linear regression  (and negative binomial regression) in some cases. The post (here) quite helpfully includes suggested code as well as Stata output illustrations.

Fantasy SCOTUS

Greg Mitchell (UVa) encourages folks to participate in FantasySCOTUS, a project co-sponsored by the Harlan Institute and UVa. In exchange for playing, paprticipants earn a chance to win a $200 Amazon gift certificate each month.

CELS: Looking Backward and Forward

Northwestern University Law School and the CELS 2011 co-organizers, Bernie Black, Shari Diamond, and Emerson Tiller, hosted and executed a truly outstanding conference last weekend in Chicago.

Going forward, CELS 2012 (No.7), is scheduled for Fri.-Sat., November 9-10, 2012, at Stanford Law School. CELS co-organizers, Dan Ho and John Donohue will lead the effort.

For those interested in nascent history, the annual Conferences on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) were launched in 2006, in response to the growing level of empirical scholarship in law schools and elsewhere. It has thus far been held at University of Texas (2006), NYU (2007), Cornell (2008), USC (2009), Yale (2010), and Northwestern (2011), and is scheduled for Stanford (2012), Penn (2013), and UC Berkeley (2014), in each case with generous support from the host school.

UPDATE: Per custom, Dave Hoffman (Temple) weighs in with his observations of CELS 2011 (here).

The Journal of Law and Courts

As Chair of the Law and Courts section of the American Political Science Association, I am delighted to announce the inauguration of the Journal of Law and Courts, the official journal of the section.

The Journal is edited by David Klein, of the University of Virginia's Department of Politics, and published by the University of Chicago Press. The JLC is a double-blind peer-reviewed, single-submission journal, indexed by Lexis-Nexis, Westlaw, EBSCO, JSTOR, and others. While formally an APSA section journal, the JLC aims to be the premier outlet for the publication of work on law, courts, and things judicial from a wide range of perspectives.  More information about the journal and instructions for authors can be found here.

Submissions are being accepted now, via the journal's Editorial Manager page. We anticipate publication of the inaugural issue in spring 2013.

An Updated Database of State Tort Law Reforms (4th)

Ronen Avraham (Texas) recently alerted me to an update of one of the more helpful resources around for those who study tort reform. Specifically, Database of State Tort Law Reforms (DSTLR 4th) seeks to create "one 'canonized' dataset will increase our understanding of tort reform’s impacts on our lives." A fuller (though excerpted) description follows.

"This manuscript of the DSTLR (4th) updates the DSTLR (3rd) and contains the most detailed, complete and comprehensive legal dataset of the most prevalent tort reforms in the United States between 1980 and 2010.... The dataset records state laws in all fifty states and the District of Columbia over the last several decades. For each reform we record the effective date, a short description of the reform, whether or not the jury is allowed to know about the reform, whether the reform was upheld or struck down by the states’ courts, as well as whether it was amended by the state legislator."

UPDATED: 1st Annual Western Empirical Legal Studies Conference -- Call for Papers

UPDATED:  The application period for the Western Empirical Legal Studies Conference has been extended. The new deadline is November 18.

The Call for Papers is here ; information and applications are here.

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Joe Doherty (UCLA) passed along information about a development that will certainly interest ELS folks. Joe also made a point to note that the one-day conference, described below, is designed in large part to "give law and graduate students a place to present their ELS research." The announcement and contact information follow.

"The UCLA School of Law Empirical Legal Scholars Association (ELSA) is proud to announce the First Annual Western Empirical Legal Studies Conference February 18, 2012. The WELS Conference is open to law and graduate students (political science, sociology, economics, etc.), and provides them with a forum to present their empirical legal research. The [extended] deadline for submission is November 18, 2011."

Further information and a submission form are available at the UCLA-ELSA website.