ELS History

Schlegel's (1995) important and comprehensive treatment of American legal realism and "empirical social science" makes clear the importance of, among other factors, the "Brandeis Brief" in Muller v. Oregon (1908), Yale's comparatively under-appreciated Underhill Moore, and the Legal Realists, broadly understood, to today's empirical legal studies. Marty Wells (Cornell--Statistics) brought an additional fascinating piece of empirical legal studies history to my attention that warrants circulation as it also contributed to ELS's development. Specifically, in late 1912 Cornell professor (and American Statistical Association President) Walter Willcox's presidential address (subsequently published in 1913), entitled The Need of Social Statistics as an Aid to the Courts, notes: "It is the lack of convincing social statistics upon such problems which has made it impossible to answer with confidence many of the questions judges and legislatures have assumed or felt bound to answer."