Empirical Legal Studies

Workshop on Empirical Methods in Intellectual Property

David Schwartz (Chi-Kent) asked that I pass along on the inaugural "Workshop on Empirical Methods in Intellectual Property," co-sponsored by Chicago-Kent's Center for Empirical Studies of Intellectual Property and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. I am happy to oblige and welcome another field-specific empirical methods workshop into the fold. Summary information follows.

"The workshop is intended to give scholars engaging in empirical and experimental studies of IP a chance to receive feedback on their work at an early stage in their research. Accordingly, the workshop will be limited to a small cohort of scholars discussing projects that are still in their developmental stages. Projects that will have substantially begun data collection by the time of the workshop are inappropriate. Pilot data collection is, however, appropriate."

"The workshop will be organized around a modest number of projects. Each project presenter will be expected to circulate a description of the project of no more than 10 pages by October 1. Each project will be assigned to an expert commenter and will be allotted 45 minutes of discussion by the attendees."

For those interested, applications are due by August 24. Decisions will be made by September 2. Click here for detailed information; email Christi Guerri ([email protected]) with any questions.

Statistical Power and Errors

A series of posts (one dating back to 2004) by Andrew Gelman (Columbia--Statistics), including links to helpful papers, provides a nice overview of the array of potential errors flowing from under-powered papers. A refresher on the nomenclature (here) sets forth the basics.

"A Type 1 error is commtted if we reject the null hypothesis when it is true. A Type 2 error is committed if we accept the null hypothesis when it is false. A Type S error is an error of sign. A Type M error is an error of magnitude."

Later posts (here), along with relevant papers (here and here), develop the issue further. Insofar as the number of papers I see that neglect reporting results from basic power tests remains far too large, these links might interest some readers.

SCOTUS & Judicial Decisionmaking Data Sets

Paul Collins, Jr. (Univ. N. Texas--Poli Sci) notes the public availability of the U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings Database that he and co-author Lori Ringhand used in their recent book, Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings and Constitutional Change (Cambridge Press, 2013).

"This database provides a wealth of information regarding the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court nominees held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Based on confirmation hearing dialogue, the dataset includes information on the political environment surrounding the nomination, the issue and subissue areas being discussed, and the manner in which the nominees answer senators' questions. In addition, the database contains information on the discussion of judicial decisions at the hearings, including the name of the decisions and the courts that rendered the cases debated at the hearings."

Those who visit the site (here) will note that it includes a growing compilation of data sets--most germane to federal court judicial decisionmaking--linked to selected publications that exploit the data. Also, relevant Stata do files accompany many of the data sets. Not only does this site help disseminate useful data, but it also facilitates replication efforts.

Two final notes. First, when JELS editors (myself included) or JELS referees request data and do files from authors incident to manuscript reviews, Paul's web site includes examples of "best practices" that should be widely emulated.  Second, graduate and law students seeking to learn empirical methods will find these "ready-to-use" data sets invaluable.

Mechanical Turk & Sample Validity Problems

Many folks, especially those who conduct psychology experiments, will want to consider carefully Dan Kahan's (Yale) recent post about problems with relying on Mechanical Turk for data. More specifically, Kahan discusses "the invalidity of studies that use samples of Mechanical Turk workers to test hypotheses about cognition and political conflict over societal risks and other policy-relevant facts."

According to Dan, the "three decisive 'sample validity' problems" include: selection bias, prior, repeated exposure to study measures, and subjects' nationality misrepresentation. These problems, according to Dan, render Mechanical Turk samples particularly problematic for studies of culturally or ideologically grounded forms of “motivated reasoning.”

Stanford Law Review & ELS

I am delighted to note that Stanford Law Review's current issue (65:6) focuses exclusively on empirical legal studies. The issue features essays from six Stanford faculty members who used papers presented at last year's CELS (hosted by Stanford Law School) as a starting point to discuss the state of empirical work in an array of substantive legal sub-fields. The introductory essay, The Empirical Revolution in Law, by Prof. Dan Ho (Stanford) and Stanford Law's former Dean, Larry Kramer, provides a nice frame and overview. I recommend the entire issue to all.

I should also note that the 2013 CELS, hosted by Penn Law School, is scheduled for October 25-26, 2013. Those hoping to present papers or posters need to submit by no later than midnight (EST) on Friday, July 12, 2013.

Call For Papers: 2014 Asian Law & Economics Association Annual Meeting

The 10th Annual Conference of the Asian Law and Economics Association (AsLEA) will be held on June 20–21, 2014 (Friday and Saturday) in Taipei, Taiwan, at the National Taiwan University College of Law.

Those interested in presenting are invited to submit papers by Feb. 15, 2014 (at least in draft form), together with a short abstract, to: [email protected]

Papers may be on any topic related to Law and Economics, be it theoretical, empirical, or experimental. Priority in selection will be given to completed papers. AsLEA encourages the submission of proposed panels (containing three papers) for consideration. Panel submission forms can be found here.

Data on Delayed Notice Search Warrants

The trend is palpable. As Prof. Witmer-Rich (Cleveland State) explains in this post, a Delayed Notice Search Warrant (aka: "Sneak and Peek searches" and "Black Bag jobs") involves "the police conduct[ing] a covert search of a home or business when the occupant is away.  Sometime later, they give the occupant notice of the search—maybe days, weeks or months (today, 90 days is most common)." Those interested in this issue should pull Witmer-Rich's forthcoming paper, The Rapid Rise of “Sneak and Peak” Searches, and the Fourth Amendment “Rule Requiring Notice."