Empirical Legal Studies

Non-Law Folk Trying to Figure Out Litigation Data & Selection Effects

A recent post on the Stata list involving law-related data (here, patent litigation) struggles with selection-effect questions. Those familiar with law- and litigation-related data understand why selection issues are almost always present in litigation data. (And those unfamiliar with law too often do not.)

Contractual Intuitions

In an interesting paper, forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, Intuitions About Contract Formation, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan (Penn.) and David Hoffman (Temple), take readers back to key first-year contracts questions involving contract formation. The paper reports five separate studies that seek to, "... fill a gap in the existing literature by exploring how ordinary consumers understand contract formation and how, in turn, their intuitions about contract formation affect their contractual choices." An excerpted abstract follows.

"The first section of this Article surveys intuitions about what the law of formation is. In a world in which the vast majority of contracts are signed without the advice of counsel, most people have to draw inferences based on their background knowledge and beliefs. It turns out that the colloquial understanding of contract formation is about the formalization of an agreement rather than actual assent.

In the second part of the Article, we tease out the intuitive relationship between formation and obligation. The law of contracts is very clear that parties’ obligations to one another turn entirely on whether or not they have mutually manifested assent to be bound. And, in fact, we find that behavioral results suggest that legal (or legalistic) formation does enhance commitment to a deal irrespective of its power to impose sanctions; it seems that the law has freestanding normative force. However, we also find that the subjective sense of obligation is not as black or white as the law would predict. Parties are influenced by the natural, informal obligations to one another that build over the course of a transaction, increasing their commitment to the partnership in stages rather than all at once at the moment of formation."

A Wide-Angle Lens on ELS Over The years

In Empiricism, Experimentalism, and Conditional Theory, Victoria Nourse (Georgetown) and Greg Shaffer (Minn.) set out to "examine empiricism (reflected in the empirical legal studies movement) and experimentalism (reflected in the new governance movement) as two complementary strands of New Legal Realism." Along the way, the paper traces ELS' emergence and places it into helpful historical context. Noting tension between empiricism and experimentalism, the authors argue:

"... that this tension can be productive for overcoming the challenges of each strand and we offer a theoretical resolution, one which takes the best from each practice in service of an approach that is not model-driven, but problem-centered, that seeks in its claims to science not a claim of final authority but one of discovery and willingness both to work within and challenge received wisdom. We offer two concepts by which to assess the success of a new legal realism: 'emergent analytics' and 'conditional theory.' These two concepts bring empiricism and experimentalism together. We reject in particular radical skepticism of formal law, to which both movements could be prone, and contend that new legal realism must closely engage with formal law’s conditional role in a dynamically changing world."

Call For Proposals: Roundtable on Empirical Methods in Intellectual Property

The second annual Roundtable on Empirical Methods in Intellectual Property, co-hosted by Chicago-Kent and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, will take place in Chicago, IL, on 19-20 September 2014.

The Roundtable seeks 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 Roundtable 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 Roundtable are inappropriate. Pilot data collection is, however, appropriate.

Those interested in proposing research projects will find specific application information here. Please note that applications are due by 1 August 2014.

Categorical Variable Graphics

Stata graphics can be complex and frustrating. One small point, common in legal research, involves graphics options for categorical variables. A recent listserv discussion isolates the question and includes a solution with helpful instructions (here). (Please note that the preferred solution requires a user-installed package ("catplot").)