Empirical Methods for the Law, Syracuse, Italy, 2017
The empirical legal movement is gaining momentum rapidly. Most contributions consist of applying the best empirical methods from the social sciences to legal issues. But the law is not always best served by applying the tried and tested empirical tools. Ultimately, lawyers argue normatively. It depends on the weight of a normative concern whether intervention that turns out unnecessary is worse than non-intervention that would have been in order. Other legal issues are ill defined in the first place, and then defy attempts at identifying causal effects. The papers from this symposium explore empirical strategies that directly target these and other legal challenges.
Main contributions by: Christoph Engel, Jeffrey Rachlinski, Daniel Klerman (with Eric Helland and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee), Eric Helland (with Jungmo Yoon), Mathew McCubbins (with Jonathan Katz), J.J. Prescott, Eric Talley