Empirical Legal Studies

Another Dedicated Empirical Legal Scholarship Law Review Issue: Virginia Environmental Law Journal (Spring 2019)

A colleague at UVa passed along the following call for papers (below) for the benefit of empirical environmental law scholars. (On a related aside, I'm beginning to detect a faint increase in the number of traditional student-edited law reviews moving in a direction that more closely resembles peer-reviewed journals.)

VELJ Empirical Issue Submissions

The Virginia Environmental Law Journal (VELJ) is calling for empirical articles, which will be published in its first annual empirical legal scholarship issue in Spring 2019. We are looking for pieces that discuss environmental law topics by utilizing quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods.

The submission process begins June 15 and concludes September 15, 2018. Publication decisions will be released no later than December 1, 2018. The submission process is exclusive, such that authors who submit to VELJ may not submit to other publications until receiving a decision from the VELJ Editorial Board. If an offer is extended, the author must accept (i.e. the offer is binding).

The articles will be reviewed by a double-blind peer review process. Please submit a cover letter (or similar email), the article (in a .doc or .docx format), a CV, and any supporting materials (detailed below) to: [email protected]

Length and Formatting

• VELJ strongly prefers articles ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 words (footnotes included).
• Manuscript should be double-spaced, utilize footnotes, and conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (19th ed. 2010).

Supporting Materials

• Abrief explanation of the study design, methodology, and/or analysis of the empirical work underlying the article.
• Substantiating data sets and/or supporting material are welcome at the time of submission, but not required. If VELJ subsequently requests any archival of data sets and necessary supporting materials, the author will be expected to permit this.

Those desiring additional information click here; those with any concerns regarding restraints imposed by an institutional review board please email your concerns to: [email protected]

CELS 2018--Paper Submission Deadline Extension

The University of Michigan Law School and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS), co-hosts of the 13th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) on November 9-10, 2018, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, are pleased to announce that the deadline for paper submissions has been extended until June 29, 2018 (midnight, Eastern Time).

CELS is a highly regarded interdisciplinary gathering that draws researchers from across the United States and the world, bringing together scholars in law, economics, political science, psychology, policy analysis, and other fields who are interested in the empirical analysis of law and legal institutions. Papers are selected through a peer review process and discussion at the conference includes assigned commentators and audience questions.

CELS will consider empirical papers spanning all areas of empirical legal studies, including areas of newer or evolving interest, such as replication studies. Authors are encouraged to submit works-in-progress; however, submissions should be completed drafts that include principal results. Submitted papers must be unpublished (and expected to be unpublished at the time of the conference). If accepted, authors will have an opportunity to submit a revised draft prior to the conference for presentation and discussion. Please note that accepted papers will be made available to all conference participants.

The conference will include a poster session that features not only traditional-style posters presenting original research but also a "book nook" in which authors or editors of recently published (or forthcoming) volumes may exhibit their work and its primary findings. Book authors or editors who are interested in the "book nook" should contact the organizers at: [email protected]

To submit a paper, please go to the CELS 2018 Conference page on SSRN --  https://hq.ssrn.com/conference=CELS-2018 (or here). (Do not use the regular SSRN submission site.)

For more information about CELS 2018 please visit the conference website (here).

Navigating Output Among Stata, Excel, and Word

Trying to accomplish seemingly simple tasks like moving, in tabular form, output among Stata, Excel, and Word platforms strikes many as something that should not be close to impossible. Regrettably, even such seemingly simple tasks can get complicated (and frustrating) quickly. Stata Corp is helpfully deploying summer intern talent to such challenges and concrete products from this effort are already emerging. By updating one command (tab2xl), creating another (tab2docx), and leveraging a third (putdocx), users can begin to more easily move tables across software platforms. This Stata Blog post summarizes the necessary moves and includes helpful illustrations.

Update on "Blockbuster" Punitive Damages Awards

Punitive damages in general and "blockbuster" punitive damages in particular continue to exercise unusual influence in tort reform, especially given their relative and absolute scarcity. Empirical scarcity notwithstanding, punitive awards certainly warrant close and rigorous examination. Building on an earlier set of papers, Kip Viscusi (Vanderbilt) and Benjamin McMichael (Vanderbilt Business School) assess "blockbuster" awards on both empirical and normative fronts. Their paper, Taming Blockbuster Punitive Damages Awards, exploits data on the 137 punitive damages awards that were imposed between 1981 and 2013. Of note is a "heat map" (below) which illustrates the distributions of blockbuster awards across states, with darker states having had more such awards.

As the authors note, "unsurprisingly, populous states like Texas and California have had the most blockbuster awards. Interestingly, however, smaller states such as West Virginia, Alabama, and Oregon have had several awards within their borders."

An excerpted abstract follows.

"Blockbuster punitive damages awards, i.e., those awards exceeding $100 million, attract attention based on their sheer size. While there have been fewer such awards in the last decade, they remain an important presence in the legal landscape.... This Article provides the first empirical analysis of the effect of state punitive damages caps on blockbuster awards and offers the first comparison of the effect of these reforms with the effect of the Supreme Court’s current constitutional doctrine on punitive damages. Understanding the roles of these legal regimes in how the largest punitive damages awards are imposed provides unique insight into how different factors affect courts’ decisions to award punitive damages. Relying on this insight, as well as previously developed empirical evidence, we argue that it is time for a new constitutional doctrine on punitive damages. In particular, we argue that the Supreme Court should incorporate the lessons learned from the different effects of state punitive damages caps to lower the limit placed on punitive damages under the Due Process Clause. For cases involving financial loss, punitive awards more than three times the size of the accompanying compensatory award will generally violate due process. For cases involving severe injuries, such as wrongful deaths, the total value of punitive damages and compensatory damages should not exceed economic estimates of the value of a statistical life, which is an economic deterrence measure. This proposed structure would better achieve the Court’s goal of returning predictability to punitive damages awards, blockbuster and otherwise."

Jobs

Our friends at the National Center for State Courts altered us to recent employment opportunities at the Center's Williamsburg, VA, office. These include:

1. Sr. Administrative Specialist in Association Services: Salary range: $34,691.00 - $35,000.00/yr. DOQ; Position closes on Friday, 6/15/18 @ 5:00 pm ET.
2. Court Research Associate in Research Division: Annual Salary: $64,821.00/yr. Position will remain open until filled; however, for 1^st consideration, complete applications must be received by Friday, 6/22/18 @ 5:00 pm ET.

While the job application deadlines close soon (6/15 and 6/22), anyone interested should click here for further information.