Empirical Legal Studies

Announcement: Visiting Scholars at The Center for the Study of Law and Society

The Center for the Study of Law and Society invites applications for visiting scholars for 2013-2014. The Center fosters empirical research and theoretical analysis concerning legal institutions, legal processes, legal change, and the social consequences of law. Closely linked to the School of Law, CSLS creates a multidisciplinary milieu with a faculty of distinguished socio-legal scholars in sociology of law, political science, criminal justice studies, law and economics, legal history, law and psychology, and legal and social philosophy, along with visiting socio-legal scholars from the United States and around the world.  

Among the benefits of being a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society are: library privileges at the Law School and at all campus libraries; invitation to our weekly Bag Lunch Speaker Series, workshops, and scholarly exchanges; UCB campus privileges, such as athletic facilities and permission to audit classes; and, when possible, assignment to shared or other office space and use of computer, internet, and other facilities.  The Center will consider applications for periods of time that vary from one month duration to the full academic year.  

The deadline for applications is November 16, 2012.  More information, including full details about the application process, is available here: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/1273.htm.

CELS 2012

Stanford has released a (draft) preliminary CELS 2012 Program Schedule (here). Congratulations to those presenting papers or posters.

MPSA--Annual Conference & Call For Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS. 71st MPSA Political Science Conference, April 11-14, 2013. October 5th Proposal Deadline.

Please forward this email to colleagues or graduate students who may be interested in presenting at the 71st Annual MPSA Political Science Conference. There are more research papers are presented here than any other political science conference and many opportunities to meet with colleagues. The MPSA Conference has sections that cover many fields in social science that interact with political science. You do not need to be a member to submit a proposal or present a paper, but you do need to have an account (here).

The MPSA also publishes one of the top journals in the discipline, the American Journal of Political Science. The Editor of the AJPS is Rick Wilson (Rice University) and you can see the author guidelines and a virtual issue that looks at research funded by the National Science Foundation (here).

Supreme Court Database--Updated

An exceptionally helpful source of data for those interested in US Supreme Court decisions was recently updated to include data from OT2011. The Supreme Court Database (2012 release, v.01, here) "contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 19[46] and 20[11] terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices." An online codebook for this leading compilation of Supreme Court decisions (particularly for political scientists) can be found here.

Opportunity for Empirically-Minded Scholars: NSF-Funded Conference on Reconstituting Research in Access to Civil Justice

Jim Greiner (Harvard) brought the following opportunity to my attention and thought it might interest ElsBlog readers. Anyone with follow-up questions should direct them to Jim at: "jgreiner at law.harvard.edu".

"A group of researchers and field professionals in access to civil justice (A2J) in the United States is soliciting applications to attend a two-day Workshop to be held in Chicago, Illinois, on December 7-8, 2012. The application process is short, consisting of an update c.v. and a 300-word essay on a specific research question or area of inquiry regarding access to civil justice that the applicant thinks is understudied and would benefit from qualitative or quantitative empirical research. The Workshop opens with a poster session and town hall meeting on the afternoon of Friday, December 7, bringing together scholars and practitioners from many perspectives to identify and explore access to justice research needs. On the following day, Saturday, December 8, the Workshop will convene a smaller, closed session to push forward the work of revitalizing A2J research. The Workshop organizers have NSF funding to defray all reasonable expenses for travel, lodging, and food.

This Workshop presents an unusual opportunity for empirically minded researchers, particularly beginning researchers or those who have previously not focused on the administration and delivery of civil justice. A broad cross-section of field personnel, academics, funders, and government officials have been invited to the Workshop, and one goal is to create a network for future inquiries. Questions can be directed to Jim Greiner, jgreiner at law.harvard.edu. The application can be found here (scroll down the page a bit)" and is due by September 28, 2012.

Graphically Displaying Uncertainty

A nice pair of posts from Andrew Gelman's (Columbia--Poli Sci, Statistics) blog (here) illustrates and briefly discusses the virtues of visually conveying uncertainty in regression results. The initial post illustrates two competing visual approaches. A follow-up post includes (or links to) helpful coding.