Empirical Legal Studies

CELS 2015 -- Program

Here.

"Hot Bat" Fallacy -- or Pr(Daniel Murphy Homers in 6th Consecutive Game)

For any Mets (or, for that matter, Cubs) fans Andrew Gelman (Columbia--Statistics) offers his quick calculation (as well as adjustments to his initial estimate based on commenters' suggestions).

More Summer Workshops

The 2016 Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR) will be held at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Participants at the 2016 institute will arrive on Sunday June 12, and classes will commence on June 13. The institute will run until the evening of Friday June 24, with a two day break on June 18 and 19.

The institute seeks to enable students to create and critique methodologically sophisticated qualitative research designs, including case studies, tests of necessity or sufficiency, and narrative or interpretive work. It explores the techniques, uses, strengths, and limitations of these methods, while emphasizing their relationships with alternative approaches. Topics include research design, methods of structured and focused comparisons of cases, typological theory, case selection, process tracing, comparative historical analysis, congruence testing, path dependency, interpretivism, counterfactual analysis, interview and field research (including archival) techniques, necessary and sufficient conditions, fuzzy set methods, natural experiments, and philosophy of science issues relevant to qualitative research.

Attendees will have the opportunity to receive constructive feedback on their own research designs. Click here for more information. Open Pool application deadline: November 16, 2015.

Punitive Damages Update

In their recent paper, Constitutional Constraints on Punitive Damages: Clarity, Consistency, and the Outlier Dilemma, Laura and William Hines (Kansas and Iowa, respectively) provide a helpful post-State Farm picture of punitive damages activity in state and federal courts from 2003-2013. To this end, the paper looks to data (507 punitive damages cases from state and federal courts) to assess the degree to which punitive damages incorporate past Supreme Court guidance on Due Process Clause implications. What the authors' descriptive analyses imply is that "[their] 507 case sample suggests a high degree of uniformity nationwide in the process by which courts conduct the review of punitive damages awards. Less clear, however, is whether that heightened level of judicial review significantly reduced the inconsistency or unpredictability of punitive damages awards overall."

Empirical Deans

One of the academy's leading empirical legal scholars, Tom Miles, was just named the University of Chicago Law School's 15th Dean. A prolific scholar (and award-winning classroom teacher), Tom's primary research focus is in the areas of criminal justice and judicial behavior, and he has looked extensively at issues of race through a variety of legal perspectives. His scholarship makes creative use of the tools of law and economics as well as empirical methods. Not surprisingly, Tom is a Fellow in the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.

CELS 2015 -- Registration

Registration is now ongoing for 10th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS). The conference will include over 100 paper presentations with assigned discussants, and more than 30 poster presentations, all selected through peer review. The conference will open with lectures on network analysis and data visualization. The Keynote Address will be given by Richard K. Wilson, PhD, Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Professor of Genetics, Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Director of the McDonnell Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, who will speak on "Modern Genomics and Precision Medicine.”

 Click here for additional registration information.