This innovative volume explores empirical legal issues around the world. While legal studies have traditionally been worked on and of letters and with a normative bent, in recent years quantitative methods have gained traction by offering a brand new perspective of understanding law. That is, legal scholars have started to crunch numbers, not letters, to tease out the effects of law on the regulated industries, citizens, or judges in reality. In this edited book, authors from leading institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia investigate legal issues in South Africa, Argentina, the U.S., Israel, Taiwan, and other countries. Using original data in a variety of statistical tools (from the most basic chi-square analysis to sophisticated two-stage least square regression models), contributors to this book look into the judicial behaviours in Taiwan and Israel, the determinants of constitutional judicial systems in 100 countries, and the effect of appellate court decisions on media competition. In addition, this book breaks new ground in informing important policy debates. Specifically, how long should we incarcerate criminals? Should the medical malpractice liability system be reformed? Do police reduce crime? Why is South Africa’s democratic transition viable? With solid data as evidence, this volume sheds new light on these issues from a road more and more frequently taken—what is known as "empirical legal studies/analysis." This book should be useful to students, practitioners and professors of law, economics and public policy in many countries who seek to understand their legal system from a different, and arguably more scientific, perspective.

The empirical study of law, legal systems and legal institutions is widely viewed as one of the most exciting and important intellectual developments in the modern history of legal research. Motivated by a conviction that legal phenomena can and should be understood not only in normative terms but also as social practices of political, economic and ethical significance, empirical legal researchers have used quantitative and qualitative methods to illuminate many aspects of law's meaning, operation and impact. In the 43 chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research leading scholars provide accessible and original discussions of the history, aims and methods of empirical research about law, as well as its achievements and potential. The Handbook has three parts. The first deals with the development and institutional context of empirical legal research. The second - and largest - part consists of critical accounts of empirical research on many aspects of the legal world - on criminal law, civil law, public law, regulatory law and international law; on lawyers, judicial institutions, legal procedures and evidence; and on legal pluralism and the public understanding of law. The third part introduces readers to the methods of empirical research, and its place in the law school curriculum.

This exciting textbook introduces the basic tenets and methodologies of empirical legal research. Explaining how to initiate and conduct empirical research projects, how to evaluate the methods used and how to analyze and engage with the results, Kees van den Bos provides a vibrant and reliable primer for students and practitioners looking to engage actively in legal research.

Empirical Legal Research describes how to investigate the roles of legislation, regulation, legal policies and other legal arrangements at play in society. It is invaluable as a guide to legal scholars, practitioners and students on how to do empirical legal research, covering history, methods, evidence, growth of knowledge and links with normativity. This multidisciplinary approach combines insights and approaches from different social sciences, evaluation studies, Big Data analytics and empirically informed ethics. The authors present an overview of the roots of this blossoming interdisciplinary domain, going back to legal realism, the fields of law, economics and the social sciences, and also to civilology and evaluation studies. The book addresses not only data analysis and statistics, but also how to formulate adequate research problems, to use (and test) different types of theories (explanatory and intervention theories) and to apply new forms of literature research to the field of law such as the systematic, rapid and realist reviews and synthesis studies. The choice and architecture of research designs, the collection of data, including Big Data, and how to analyze and visualize data are also covered. The book discusses the tensions between the normative character of law and legal issues and the descriptive and causal character of empirical legal research, and suggests ways to help handle this seeming disconnect. This comprehensive guide is vital reading for law practitioners as well as for students and researchers dealing with regulation, legislation and other legal arrangements.

Empirical legal research is a growing field of academic expertise, yet lawyers are not always familiar with the possibilities and limitations of the available methods. Empirical Legal Research in Action presents readers with first-hand experiences of empirical research on law and legal issues.

Is the death penalty a more effective deterrent than lengthy prison sentences? Does a judge's gender influence their decisions? Do independent judiciaries promote economic freedom? Answering such questions requires empirical evidence, and arguments based on empirical research have become an everyday part of legal practice, scholarship, and teaching. In litigation judges are confronted with empirical evidence in cases ranging from bankruptcy and taxation to criminal law and environmental infringement. In academia researchers are increasingly turning to sophisticated empirical methods to assess and challenge fundamental assumptions about the law. As empirical methods impact on traditional legal scholarship and practice, new forms of education are needed for today's lawyers. All lawyers asked to present or assess empirical arguments need to understand the fundamental principles of social science methodology that underpin sound empirical research. An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research introduces that methodology in a legal context, explaining how empirical analysis can inform legal arguments; how lawyers can set about framing empirical questions, conducting empirical research, analysing data, and presenting or evaluating the results. The fundamentals of understanding quantitative and qualitative data, statistical models, and the structure of empirical arguments are explained in a way accessible to lawyers with or without formal training in statistics. Written by two of the world's leading experts in empirical legal analysis, drawing on years of experience in training lawyers in empirical methods, An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research will be an invaluable primer for all students, academics, or practising lawyers coming to empirical research - whether they are embarking themselves on an empirical research project, or engaging with empirical arguments in their field of study, research, or practice.

Herbert Kritzer presents a clear introduction to the history, methods and substance of empirical legal research (ELR). Quantitative methods dominate in empirical legal research, but an important segment of the field draws on qualitative methods, such as semi-structured interviews and observation. In this book both methodologies are explored alongside systematic data analysis. Offering an overview of the broad ELR literature, the institutions of the law, the central actors of the law, and the subjects of the law are each addressed in this highly readable account that will be essential reading for legal researchers.

An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research introduces empirical methodology in a legal context, explaining how empirical analysis can inform legal arguments; how lawyers can set about framing empirical questions, conducting empirical research, analysing data, and presenting or evaluating the results.

This volume in the prestigious series of Oxford Handbooks provides a widely accessible overview of legal scholarship at the start of the 21st century. Through 43 essays by leading legal scholars based in the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Germany, it offers original and interpretative accounts of the nature, themes and trends of research and writing about all areas of the law.

Informatics is a cross-roads of disciplines, but it is also a forge for implementations that are transforming our society because they are transforming all forms of production. Law is, without a doubt, a very important social application domain of informatics. In the volume presented here, legal knowledge is considered mainly from the lawyer's point of view while taking into account the implementation of expert systems. It is a review of the best known theories of the representation of legal orders and systems in the light of the possibility of using more advanced computer tools. A solution to the problem of how to represent legal knowledge in such a way that it can be used by the inference engine of an expert system for making calculations and arriving at consequences is also proposed.