Empirical Legal Studies

Judicial Citation Patterns and NY County Surrogate's Courts

As ELS scholars continue to develop judge citation studies--typically from the "top-down" (that is, we know comparatively far more about judge citation patterns in the SCOTUS and other federal courts than non-federal judicial contexts)--comparatively far less is know about judge citation patterns in various lower and state court systems. A recent paper by Bridget Crawford (Pace), What Probate Courts Cite: Lessons from the New York County Surrogate's Court 2017-2018, contributes to a scholarly gap by describing the basic contours of judge citation patterns in New York County Surrogate's Court during 2017 and 2018. New York County's Surrogate's courts serve the most densely populated county in the United States. An excerpted abstract follows.

"... This Article makes three principal claims — one empirical, one interpretative, and one normative. This Article demonstrates through data, derived from a study of all decrees and orders issued by the New York County Surrogate’s Court in the years 2017 and 2018, that the probate court located in the most densely populated county in the United States cites fewer authorities less often than almost any other court (of any level) for which data is available.

There are a variety of factors that may explain this low rate of citation by the New York County Surrogate’s Court including docket size, the size and composition of the court’s staff, a judicial perception that the application of the law is a relatively mechanical process, or a subjective determination that speed in processing the court’s docket outweighs any public interest in citation-replete decrees and orders. Yet by increasing its engagement with a range of authorities, the New York County Surrogate’s Court (and indeed any probate court) may increase public confidence in the judiciary while also enhancing understanding of trusts and estates as a complex and dynamic area of law."

NYT, MTurk, and Data

Yesterday's New York Times ran a lengthy piece (here) on Amazon's Mechanical Turk ("MTurk") platform. The author joined the ranks of "Turkers" for a brief period and did some "Turking" to supplement his background research for the article. While the piece reflects a decidedly labor-economic focus, insofar as "MTurk"-created data remain a staple for an increasing slice of experimental psychological research (despite earlier concerns raised years ago by, among others, Dan Kahan (see, e.g., here and here)), the NYT''s article warrants a quick read.

CELS 2019--Conference Schedule

Co-sponsored by Claremont McKenna College and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS), the 14th annual CELS 2019 conference schedule is here.

ComplianceNet 2020 Conference--Call for Submissions

Yuval Feldman (Bar-Ilan, Israel) asked us to circulation information about the forthcoming ComplianceNet 2020 conference and we are, of course, delighted to do just that. Those interested should note the 1/24/2020 submission deadline.

The ComplianceNet 2020 conference will take place on June 29 – 30, 2020, and will be hosted by the University College London (UCL) School of Public Policy/Department of Political Science and the UCL Global Governance Institute. We are currently accepting panel or paper submissions, with a submission deadline of January 24, 2020.

ComplianceNet conferences seek to bring together scholars from a range of different disciplines to study the interaction between rules and human behaviour, broadly defined. The first two conferences were highly successful and brought together academics from business, criminology, economics, law, political science, psychology and sociology, among other fields. ComplianceNet’s website includes information about its structure and goals (click here) as well as the 2020 conference (click here).