Empirical Legal Studies

CELS 2023 -- Call for Papers

2023 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies

October 13-14, 2023

Call for Papers

University of Chicago Law School

The 2023 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) is now accepting submissions. CELS will consider empirical papers spanning all areas of empirical legal 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 Submitted papers must be unpublished (and expected to be unpublished at the time of the conference).

The Paper Submission Deadline is Thursday, June 29, 2023 (11:59 PM Central Daylight Time). There is no charge for submissions.

To submit a paper, please visit the CELS 2023 website We encourage preregistration of all experiments, and we encourage all authors to make their data, scripts, and code publicly available upon publication to the extent your methodology permits. We welcome replication studies and papers that develop and demonstrate empirical methods.

Papers are selected through a peer review process. If accepted, authors will have an opportunity to submit a revised draft prior to the conference for presentation and discussion. Discussion at the conference includes assigned commentators and audience questions. Accepted papers will be made available to all conference participants.

About: The University of Chicago Law School and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS) are pleased to host the 17th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) on October 13–14, 2023, in person at the University of Chicago. CELS is an interdisciplinary gathering that draws researchers from across the United States and the world, bringing together scholars in law, economics, political science, psychology, and other fields who are interested in the empirical analysis of law and legal institutions. To visit the conference website, click here.

If you have questions about the submissions process, please contact the conference organizers at [email protected].

CELS (Toronto)--Some Very Good News and Some Sub-Optimal News

I begin with the good news: CELS (Toronto), scheduled for March 18-19, 2022, will go forward. The sub-optimal wrinkle, however, is that organizers were forced to move the event to an on-line (remote) platform and format. As the organizers note: "Unfortunately, the surge in Omicron has led to travel restrictions into Canada, as well as restrictions on gatherings in the province of Ontario. Events at the University of Toronto are not permitted. It is likely that many of these restrictions will still be in force in March."

For more information about the conference click here.

15th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS)

Given the many disruptions incident to the COVID-19 pandemic, I am nothing short of delighted to announce that the Fifteenth Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS), presented by the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS) and hosted by the University of Toronto Faculty of Law (Canada), is now scheduled for Friday, March 18, and Saturday, March 19, 2022.

CELS brings together scholars from an array of fields, including law, economics, political science, psychology, statistics, sociology, history, and policy analysis. Papers are selected through a peer-review process and each is assigned an individual discussant. CELS invites empirical papers that span all areas of empirical legal studies. Authors are encouraged to submit works-in-progress; however, submissions should be completed paper drafts that include main results. Submitted papers must also be unpublished (and are expected to be unpublished at the time of the conference). The paper submission portal will open August 1, 2021. The deadline for submissions is October 17, 2021.

Of course, while the conference organizers plan on (and sincerely hope for) an in-person event, given the ongoing uncertainties participants are urged to delay purchasing any non-refundable airline tickets at this moment. Additional conference information is found here.

Theodore Eisenberg Memorial Article Prize -- Update

Each year, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) awards the Theodore Eisenberg Memorial Prize for the best poster presented at the Conference. Inasmuch as last year’s Conference was postponed due to the pandemic, this year the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies will award the Theodore Eisenberg Memorial Article Prize to the best paper submitted to JELS in 2021 and accepted for publication. The prize will be judged by the JELS editors. To honor our late colleague’s strong and enduring interest in mentoring and developing new empirical scholars, we will heavily favor submissions by early-career scholars in making this assessment. We will automatically consider any paper submitted between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2021, as eligible for consideration. The award will be noted in the volume in which the article is published and an announcement sent to the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.