what is empirical legal research

Empirical Legal Studies

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Eisenberg’s scholarship upended conventional wisdom that these cases were unduly clogging courts.  Eisenberg was foremost among a growing cadre of legal scholars to exploit sophisticated statistical tools to systematically explore a wide array of legal issues. Since then, and propelled by Eisenberg’s pioneering scholarship, Cornell emerged as a leading center for empirical legal studies–a field that has altered the ways in which scholars, judges, litigants, and policy-makers think about and approach many legal issues. The launch of the  Journal of Empirical Legal Studies  in the early 2000s, edited at Cornell Law School and a leading journal in the field, cemented Cornell Law School’s status as a hub for what is now an important intellectual movement embraced by a growing number of scholars around the world. A cadre of Cornell law school faculty, often in collaboration with colleagues from a diverse array of social science disciplines, are widely acknowledged as among the most influential scholars in the empirical legal studies field.

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Empirical Legal Research: Getting Started

• Getting Started
• Articles and Journals
• Data Sets and Other Sources for Statistical Information
• Other Resources

Research Guides

If you are not familiar with the topic, you may find that a research guide or tutorial is a useful tool to assist you with your research. We hope that you will find this guide helpful.

You should review the date the research guide was last updated. Using a research guides updated in the last year will help ensure you are relying on current information. However, if you are conducting historical research, an older guide may be helpful.

Some of the most popular guides include:

1)  Georgetown Law Library, Statistics & Empirical Legal Studies Research Guide , (Updated June 2010)

2)  Chicago-Kent School of Law,   Empirical and Non-Legal Research Resources Guide , (Updated August 10, 2010)

3)  While not specifically providing a research guide, the Empirical Research Support site   of Goodson Law Library at Duke University provides links to training tools, data-sets, and other information to assist empirical legal researchers.

Current Awareness and News - Empirical Legal Studies Blog

The ELS (Empirical Legal Studies) Blog is one of the premier sources of news and comment about empirical legal research, publications and training. Below is a feed from the blog.

Empirical Research in Law, Empirical Legal Studies or Scholarship? Why is empirical research in the law important?

While there has been some debate regarding the proper name for and definition of empirical research in law, for purposes of introduction, this guide accepts the explanation put forth by John Baldwin and Gwynn Davis in Chapter 39 of the Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies: 

"...empirical research in law involves the study, through direct methods rather than secondary sources, of the institutions rules, procedures, and personnel of the law, with a view to understanding how they operate and what effects they have.  It is not a synonym for 'statistical' or 'factual', and its intellectual depth and significance are not determined by the empirical label ... 

Pauline Kim, University of Washington School of Law, put it similarly: 

Empirical legal scholarship involves methods developed in the social sciences and is different from traditional legal research in that it "systematically explores facts about the operation of the law and legal institutions."

Empirical research is important because "there are important questions in the law and about legal institutions that can’t be answered" through the traditional textual analysis methods of research.   For example, if a researcher is interested in researching the impact of selecting a particular rule of law on the decision making of individuals and businesses. Textual analysis would not shed light on a topic. However, we can certainly understand how an argument for a judgment accepting a particular rule of law would be strengthened by including evidence on the likely effect on "actors in the real world."

Pauline Kim, Do We Have the Numbers? Empirical Research in Law – International Law as a Case Study, Program at the American Association of Law Libraries Annual Meeting (July 10, 2006)

Funding for Empirical Legal Research

Conducting empirical research often involves significant costs, including the costs associated with collection or accessing data. As a result, empirical researchers may need to seek funds from grants awarding organizations and other funding sources. Academic researchers may find the institutional Office of Research can provide assistance in locating information about grant awarding institutions as well as assistance in preparing grant proposals. If the services of a Research Office are not available, some of the resources below will assist the researcher in seeking funding.

• American Bar Association Section of Litigation Research Fund The Litigation Research Fund was established by the section to support original and practical scholarly work that significantly advances the understanding of civil litigation in the United States. Projects addressing issues of low-income individuals' access to civil justice are of particular interest to the section and legal academics as well as social scientists and scholars from other disciplines are invited to apply for funding of their research.
• Grants.gov All discretionary grants offered by federal grant-making agencies can be found on Grants.gov. Federal grant applications can also be submitted online via this site.

Subject Guide

Insitutional Review Boards

Empirical researchers are often required, before they begin the research, to obtain approval of the research from an Institutional Review Board (IRB). They may also be required to submit periodic progress reports to the IRB. Academic researchers may find that the Office of Research can provide useful information or guide the researcher through the IRB Process. 

• Code of Federal Regulations Title 45 Part 46 Address the Protection of Human Subjects and the Requirements for IRB Review.
• OCU Office of Institutional Research and Assessment
• University of Oklahoma Office of Research Services
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Empirical Legal Research Resources

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Selected Treatises: How to Conduct Empirical Legal Research

Representative empirical legal research works.

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This page contains a selected list of major treatises on conducting empirical legal research, as well as a selection of books that demonstrate how some scholars use empirical legal research in their writing. You may find more works on the topic using subject headings, such as "legal research -- methodology," in Searchworks , the Stanford Library catalog.

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Legal Research Manual

Empirical legal research.

• Develop an Outline
• Stage 1: Frame Issues and Identify Keywords
• Stage 2: Initial Research
• Stage 3: Preliminary Integration of Research and Analysis
• Stage 4: Intensive Case Research and Analysis
• Stage 5: Statute/Regulation Research
• Stage 6: Synthesize Arguments and Prepare Detailed Outline
• Stage 7: Final Writing
• Legal Encyclopedias
• Legal Journal Literature
• ICLL Search Tips
• Literature from Other Disciplines
• The Legislative Process (Federal)
• Federal Statutes
• The Legislative Process (Ontario)
• Ontario Statutes
• Finding Statutes & Bill Information (Electronic Sources)
• Finding Statutes & Bill Information (Print Sources)
• Coming Into Force of Legislation
• Status and Copies of Bills
• Online Sources
• Print Sources
• Sources for Regulations
• Finding Federal Regulations (Online)
• Finding Federal Regulations (Print)
• Using Online Sources to Update Federal Regulations
• Finding Ontario Regulations (Online)
• Finding Ontario Regulations (Print)
• Using Online Sources to Update Ontario Regulations
• Anatomy of a Decision
• Sources for Locating Full Text Decisions
• Print Reporters
• Digest Services
• Lexis Advance Quicklaw - QuickCite
• WestlawNext Canada - KeyCite
• Digests and Encyclopedias
• Sources for Case Law
• Nominate Reports (pre-1865)
• The Law Reports (LR)
• Sources for UK Legislation
• Federal Court System
• State Court Systems
• American Law Reports (ALRs)
• Legal Encyclopedias and Digests
• American Case Law
• Case Citators: Shepard's and KeyCite
• US Federal and State Legislation
• Secondary Sources on International Law
• Primary Sources of International Law
• Secondary Sources on Foreign Jurisdictions
• Primary Sources of Foreign Law
• Finding Legal Information Online
• Evaluating Online Information
• American Legal Research Guides
• British Legal Research Guides
• International Legal Research Guides
• Indigenous Research Guides
• Appendix: Quick Legal Research Checklist

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• Subjects: Law
• Tags: case law , common law , law , legal research , legal skills , legislation , regulations , statutes

Empirical Research Services

Meet the Team

From research design to data collection/creation to analysis and presentation of results, we support faculty working with empirical research.

Research Assistance

• Support for faculty doing research with an empirical component

Publication Support

• Review empirical papers for sound research design and methodology
• create publishable quality tables and figures

Instruction

• In-class research instruction
• How to conduct surveys for programs at HLS
• How to read empirical papers for SJD students

Consultations

Schedule an appointment to discuss your project and learn how we can support you

• Full support for finding, acquiring, cleaning, reformatting, merging, and scraping data
• identifying testable hypotheses
• research design
• consulting on validity and reliability
• analyzing, visualization, and reporting
• Conducting field experiments, mturk, and nationally representative surveys
• Data visualization
• Text analysis, geographical information systems (GIS)
• Review grant applications for sound methodology; application support for IRB compliance

Resources for Empirical Research

This section offers broad advice on what to keep in mind when constructing a research design. Many of the points discussed below are drawn from and presented more fully within Epstein & King (2002) as well as King, Keohane, & Verba (1994) which are highly recommended sources for in-depth guidance on proper research design and execution. The first step of any empirical research study is to formulate a research question (PDF) . What does the study seek to explain? A good research question should generally conform to the following rules:

• The question should be relevant to the real world . It is important that the study seeks to provide practical and important implications for society.
• The question should contribute to an existing body of scholarly literature . By speaking to an established set of related studies, the researcher can help avoid significant problems such as duplicating or overlooking previous work. Issac Newton’s famous quote, “if I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” colorfully illustrates this rule.

Once the research question is clearly stated, the next step is to offer a clear answer to the question which is theoretically informed and from which falsifiable hypotheses can be derived. The hypothesis should:

• Be stated clearly enough to allow for a test which can determine if the proposed answer is wrong.
• Specify a relationship between an outcome (dependent variable) and one or more explanatory variables (independent variables).

If there is insufficient evidence to reject a clearly stated, falsifiable hypothesis, then the theory becomes increasingly plausible. A theory which offers many observable implications and therefore more opportunities to be tested has the potential to become a very strong theory if the hypotheses derived from it cannot be rejected.

Remember that the fundamental objective of empirical research is to make inferences —that is, using known facts to understand unknown facts. Typically we use observable data (known facts) to test certain hypotheses which are guided by theory to uncover these unknown facts.

Let’s take a look at a simple example .

• Does the scale accurately report my weight?
• When stepping on the scale multiple times, does it return a consistent weight estimate ?

Data are typically classified into two categories—qualitative and quantitative. The levels of measurement are as follows:

• Nominal data are one form of qualitative data where objects have no natural order (e.g. gender, race, religion, brand name). It does not make sense to think of Buddhism being “more than” Confucianism.
• Ordinal data are another form of qualitative data—specifically, groups which can be ranked. An example of an ordinal variable is a survey respondent’s sense of agreement (e.g. strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree). These responses do have a natural order and can be ranked, although the distance between each response is difficult to determine.
• Interval data are one from of quantitative data which have a definite natural order and, unlike ordinal data, the difference between data can be determined and is meaningful. Interval-level data do not have a natural zero point, however. For example, 0 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale is arbitrary and therefore 100 degrees Fahrenheit is not twice as warm as 50 degrees.
• Ratio data are the second form of quantitative data. In contrast, to interval data, ratio-level data have a non-arbitrary 0 point. For example, 0 yards means no length. 100 yards is twice as far as 50 yards.

Even though qualitative data are mostly based on unordered groups, they can nevertheless be analyzed quantitatively. This is achieved by coding the qualitative data of interest into numerical values. For example, if we are running a survey, we can transform gender (nominal data) into a dichotomous (dummy) variable with each respondent assigned a 1 if female and 0 if male. Likewise, the attitudinal responses on the survey can be assigned numerical values as well, for example, Strongly Agree = 4; Agree = 3; Disagree = 2; Strongly Disagree = 1. Once qualitative data have been coded into numerical variables, they can be analyzed using both basic and advanced statistical models.

In empirical legal research, content coding of natural language text is commonly employed (see Hall and Wright, 2008 ; Evans et al., 2007 ). Content analysis is a popular methodology which, for example, can be employed to summarize characteristics of interest related to court decisions. When possible, it is always best to have individuals other than the researcher code variables as to reduce bias.

Empirical research on legal issues can rely on primary (original) as well as secondary (obtained from elsewhere) data. Bradley Wright and Robert Christensen, for example, in studying the effects of public service motivation on job sector choice, employ an original survey of law students in one study ( Christensen and Wright, 2011 ) as well as survey data from the American Bar Association in another study ( Wright and Christensen, 2010 ).

Another data collection technique is webscraping, using software to visit web sites and extract specific bits of information. Here is a tutorial on web scraping written in the R language that was prepared by Jonathan Whittinghill, the Applied Research Statistician at the HLS Empirical Research Services.

This section provides links to helpful resources on analytical methodologies—both descriptive and statistical. For further assistance, you may also schedule a meeting with the empirical research services unit at the Law Library. Where to learn about analyzing data:

Empirical courses offered at Harvard For students interested in taking courses on empirical research, there are numerous classes offered at Harvard Law School, Kennedy School and FAS. There are five tracks for student interested in empirical research methods, ranging from courses appropriate for those with no background in empirical research to courses for those students who have an extensive methodological background. A description of these tracks can be found here and a list of courses offered on campus can be found in this file prepared by Jonathan Whittinghill.

MIT OpenCourseWare classes on empirical research

Political Science

Political Science Scope and Methods (Undergraduate, Berinsky, Fall 2010)

Introduction to Statistical Method in Economics (Undergraduate, Bennett, Spring 2006)

Introduction to Statistical Methods in Economics (Undergraduate, Menzel, Spring 2009)

Econometrics (Undergraduate, Angrist, Spring 2007)

Statistical Method in Economics (Graduate, Chernozhukov, Fall 2006)

Econometrics I (Graduate, Hausman & Chernozhukov, Spring 2005)

Nonlinear Econometric Analysis (Graduate, Chernoshukov & Newey, Fall 2007)

New Econometric Methods (Graduate, Newey, Spring 2007)

Time Series Analysis (Graduate, Mikusheva, 2013)

Mathematics

Introduction to Probability and Statistics (Undergraduate, Panchenko, Spring 2005)

Probability and Random Variables (Undergraduate, Sheffield, 2014)

Statistics for Applications (Undergraduate, Kempthorne, 2015)

Sloan School of Management

Statistical Thinking and Data Analysis (Undergraduate, Rudin, 2011)

Data, Models, and Decisions (Graduate, Gamarnik, Freund & Schulz, Fall 2007)

Communicating with Data (Graduate, Carroll, Summer 2003)

Doctoral Seminar in Research Methods I (Graduate, Sorensen & Bailyn, Fall 2004)

Doctoral Seminar in Research Methods II (Graduate, Sorensen, Spring 2004)

Overview of quantitative methods (PDF) prepared by Parina Patel Statistical software packages: Stata is a general-purpose statistical software package which is popular among researchers in economics, sociology, political science, epidemiology and biomedicine among others. The statisticians at Harvard Law School primarily use Stata for data analysis.

Machines with Stata are located in the computer classroom in Langdell 353. You may also purchase Stata directly from Statacorp .

• The UCLA Institute for Digital Research & Education Stata site has many excellent step-by-step tutorials on a wide range of statistical estimation procedures using Stata.
• Germán Rodriguez, Princeton University, Stata resources also has a comprehensive overview of Stata, including data management, graphics and programming examples.
• One of the advantages of Stata is its active community of users. The Statalist is an email listserver where more than 3,500 Stata users discuss all aspects of the program. If you have a question, you are likely to find a relevant discussion in the archives of the listserver.
• Stata Press publishes excellent manuals on best-practices for a whole range of statistical estimations. Most titles can be found using Hollis. The Stata Journal is also an invaluable resource for furthering usage effectiveness.
• Downloadable material for upcoming Stata workshop

R is an open-source programming language and statistical software environment. R offers a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques . A good description of the software can be found on the official site of R. Compared to Stata and certainly SPSS, R requires a significant amount of programming proficiency. The program is free and can be downloaded here .

• The UCLA Academic Technology Services R resources page includes a great set of introductory tutorials, frequently asked questions, analysis examples, and links to downloadable books on R.
• Germán Rodriguez, Princeton University, R page has an excellent series on getting started with R, data management and fitting linear and generalized linear models. A list of helpful books on R is also provided.
• Adler, Joseph (2010) R in a Nutshell and Muenchen, Robert A. and Joseph M. Hilbe (2010) R for Stata Users

IBM SPSS is another popular general-purpose statistical software package which can handle almost all econometric estimations. A notable difference between the SPSS and Stata/R environments is that SPSS relies much more on Graphical User Interface (point-and-click) procedures making it more user friendly. While the “vanilla” version of SPSS may be somewhat limited relative to Stata or R, there are many SPSS add-ons and modules which provide additional capabilities. SPSS can be bought directly from IBM SPSS .

• The UCLA Academic Technology Services SPSS page offers introductory material, examples, links to web books on SPSS, and other helpful resources.
• The UCLA Institute for Digital Research & Education SPSS site covers a wide variety of statistical estimation procedures using SPSS

SAS is yet another popular software package used for statistical analysis. It is generally understood as a powerful program especially when working with very large datasets. One significant limitation of SAS is its poor graphical capabilities.

• The UCLA Academic Technology Services SAS page provides introductory materials for beginner SAS users, analysis examples, web books and other resources.
• When discussing the results of a regression analysis, do not only focus on the parameters which are “statistically significant.” The researcher should also convey how “substantive” an effect each significant variable has on the outcome (dependent) variable. Holding other variables in the model fixed, for instance, what is the predicted value of the dependent variable when the significant independent variable in question is at its minimum, mean, and maximum values?
• If you are attempting to use your results to infer about a population, then you should do so while explicitly discussing the level of uncertainty of your estimates. This typically implies discussing the confidence levels of your estimates. For a fun discussion of uncertainty see Ian Ayres’ SuperCrunchers (pgs. 112-116).
• Try to avoid presentation of data and results using tables—graphs are almost always superior.

Epstein et al. (2006) “On the Effective Communication of Results of Empirical Studies, Part I” Vanderbilt Law Review 59(6): 1811-1871

Epstein et al. (2007) “On the Effective Communication of Results of Empirical Studies, Part II” Vanderbilt Law Review vol. 60(3): 801-846.

Once you are finished, you might be interested in trying to get your study published in a law school law review or in a peer-reviewed journal from a society and larger publisher. Washington and Lee’s Law Journal Submission and Ranking website , Ulrich’s Global Serials Directory , and ISI Journal Citation Reports are good resources for identifying both types of journals both within and outside of the United States. (There is a peer-reviewed journal that is actually devoted completely to empirical legal studies work, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies .While simultaneous submission of manuscripts to multiple journals is the norm for most law school law reviews (with August-October and February-April being the big submission “seasons”), most peer-reviewed journals require exclusive submissions. (Some student edited journals like the Harvard Law Review and Stanford Law Review are also starting to experiment with peer or faculty review and may prefer exclusive submissions.) You should always check the journal’s website for specific guidelines about preparing manuscripts for publication. (For example, the NYU Law Review has special guidelines just for empirical work).You might also want to consider depositing your data to make it available for replication and further use by future researchers. Some journals might actually require you to submit your data for manuscript review or for publication. While there are various options for storing and archiving your data, one of the most popular ones with social scientists is IQSS Dataverse . It has several features, including the ability to prepare data visualizations for users.

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (Harvard Key required)

ELG The Empirical Legal Group

Empirical Legal Studies

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Empirical Research: Definition, Methods, Types and Examples

Content Index

Empirical research: Definition

Empirical research: origin, quantitative research methods, qualitative research methods, steps for conducting empirical research, empirical research methodology cycle, advantages of empirical research, disadvantages of empirical research, why is there a need for empirical research.

Empirical research is defined as any research where conclusions of the study is strictly drawn from concretely empirical evidence, and therefore “verifiable” evidence.

This empirical evidence can be gathered using quantitative market research and  qualitative market research  methods.

For example: A research is being conducted to find out if listening to happy music in the workplace while working may promote creativity? An experiment is conducted by using a music website survey on a set of audience who are exposed to happy music and another set who are not listening to music at all, and the subjects are then observed. The results derived from such a research will give empirical evidence if it does promote creativity or not.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

You must have heard the quote” I will not believe it unless I see it”. This came from the ancient empiricists, a fundamental understanding that powered the emergence of medieval science during the renaissance period and laid the foundation of modern science, as we know it today. The word itself has its roots in greek. It is derived from the greek word empeirikos which means “experienced”.

In today’s world, the word empirical refers to collection of data using evidence that is collected through observation or experience or by using calibrated scientific instruments. All of the above origins have one thing in common which is dependence of observation and experiments to collect data and test them to come up with conclusions.

LEARN ABOUT: Causal Research

Types and methodologies of empirical research

Empirical research can be conducted and analysed using qualitative or quantitative methods.

• Quantitative research : Quantitative research methods are used to gather information through numerical data. It is used to quantify opinions, behaviors or other defined variables . These are predetermined and are in a more structured format. Some of the commonly used methods are survey, longitudinal studies, polls, etc
• Qualitative research:   Qualitative research methods are used to gather non numerical data.  It is used to find meanings, opinions, or the underlying reasons from its subjects. These methods are unstructured or semi structured. The sample size for such a research is usually small and it is a conversational type of method to provide more insight or in-depth information about the problem Some of the most popular forms of methods are focus groups, experiments, interviews, etc.

Data collected from these will need to be analysed. Empirical evidence can also be analysed either quantitatively and qualitatively. Using this, the researcher can answer empirical questions which have to be clearly defined and answerable with the findings he has got. The type of research design used will vary depending on the field in which it is going to be used. Many of them might choose to do a collective research involving quantitative and qualitative method to better answer questions which cannot be studied in a laboratory setting.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Research Questions and Questionnaires

Quantitative research methods aid in analyzing the empirical evidence gathered. By using these a researcher can find out if his hypothesis is supported or not.

• Survey research: Survey research generally involves a large audience to collect a large amount of data. This is a quantitative method having a predetermined set of closed questions which are pretty easy to answer. Because of the simplicity of such a method, high responses are achieved. It is one of the most commonly used methods for all kinds of research in today’s world.

Previously, surveys were taken face to face only with maybe a recorder. However, with advancement in technology and for ease, new mediums such as emails , or social media have emerged.

For example: Depletion of energy resources is a growing concern and hence there is a need for awareness about renewable energy. According to recent studies, fossil fuels still account for around 80% of energy consumption in the United States. Even though there is a rise in the use of green energy every year, there are certain parameters because of which the general population is still not opting for green energy. In order to understand why, a survey can be conducted to gather opinions of the general population about green energy and the factors that influence their choice of switching to renewable energy. Such a survey can help institutions or governing bodies to promote appropriate awareness and incentive schemes to push the use of greener energy.

Learn more: Renewable Energy Survey Template Descriptive Research vs Correlational Research

• Experimental research: In experimental research , an experiment is set up and a hypothesis is tested by creating a situation in which one of the variable is manipulated. This is also used to check cause and effect. It is tested to see what happens to the independent variable if the other one is removed or altered. The process for such a method is usually proposing a hypothesis, experimenting on it, analyzing the findings and reporting the findings to understand if it supports the theory or not.

For example: A particular product company is trying to find what is the reason for them to not be able to capture the market. So the organisation makes changes in each one of the processes like manufacturing, marketing, sales and operations. Through the experiment they understand that sales training directly impacts the market coverage for their product. If the person is trained well, then the product will have better coverage.

• Correlational research: Correlational research is used to find relation between two set of variables . Regression analysis is generally used to predict outcomes of such a method. It can be positive, negative or neutral correlation.

LEARN ABOUT: Level of Analysis

For example: Higher educated individuals will get higher paying jobs. This means higher education enables the individual to high paying job and less education will lead to lower paying jobs.

• Longitudinal study: Longitudinal study is used to understand the traits or behavior of a subject under observation after repeatedly testing the subject over a period of time. Data collected from such a method can be qualitative or quantitative in nature.

For example: A research to find out benefits of exercise. The target is asked to exercise everyday for a particular period of time and the results show higher endurance, stamina, and muscle growth. This supports the fact that exercise benefits an individual body.

• Cross sectional: Cross sectional study is an observational type of method, in which a set of audience is observed at a given point in time. In this type, the set of people are chosen in a fashion which depicts similarity in all the variables except the one which is being researched. This type does not enable the researcher to establish a cause and effect relationship as it is not observed for a continuous time period. It is majorly used by healthcare sector or the retail industry.

For example: A medical study to find the prevalence of under-nutrition disorders in kids of a given population. This will involve looking at a wide range of parameters like age, ethnicity, location, incomes  and social backgrounds. If a significant number of kids coming from poor families show under-nutrition disorders, the researcher can further investigate into it. Usually a cross sectional study is followed by a longitudinal study to find out the exact reason.

• Causal-Comparative research : This method is based on comparison. It is mainly used to find out cause-effect relationship between two variables or even multiple variables.

For example: A researcher measured the productivity of employees in a company which gave breaks to the employees during work and compared that to the employees of the company which did not give breaks at all.

LEARN ABOUT: Action Research

Some research questions need to be analysed qualitatively, as quantitative methods are not applicable there. In many cases, in-depth information is needed or a researcher may need to observe a target audience behavior, hence the results needed are in a descriptive analysis form. Qualitative research results will be descriptive rather than predictive. It enables the researcher to build or support theories for future potential quantitative research. In such a situation qualitative research methods are used to derive a conclusion to support the theory or hypothesis being studied.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

• Case study: Case study method is used to find more information through carefully analyzing existing cases. It is very often used for business research or to gather empirical evidence for investigation purpose. It is a method to investigate a problem within its real life context through existing cases. The researcher has to carefully analyse making sure the parameter and variables in the existing case are the same as to the case that is being investigated. Using the findings from the case study, conclusions can be drawn regarding the topic that is being studied.

For example: A report mentioning the solution provided by a company to its client. The challenges they faced during initiation and deployment, the findings of the case and solutions they offered for the problems. Such case studies are used by most companies as it forms an empirical evidence for the company to promote in order to get more business.

• Observational method:   Observational method is a process to observe and gather data from its target. Since it is a qualitative method it is time consuming and very personal. It can be said that observational research method is a part of ethnographic research which is also used to gather empirical evidence. This is usually a qualitative form of research, however in some cases it can be quantitative as well depending on what is being studied.

For example: setting up a research to observe a particular animal in the rain-forests of amazon. Such a research usually take a lot of time as observation has to be done for a set amount of time to study patterns or behavior of the subject. Another example used widely nowadays is to observe people shopping in a mall to figure out buying behavior of consumers.

• One-on-one interview: Such a method is purely qualitative and one of the most widely used. The reason being it enables a researcher get precise meaningful data if the right questions are asked. It is a conversational method where in-depth data can be gathered depending on where the conversation leads.

For example: A one-on-one interview with the finance minister to gather data on financial policies of the country and its implications on the public.

• Focus groups: Focus groups are used when a researcher wants to find answers to why, what and how questions. A small group is generally chosen for such a method and it is not necessary to interact with the group in person. A moderator is generally needed in case the group is being addressed in person. This is widely used by product companies to collect data about their brands and the product.

For example: A mobile phone manufacturer wanting to have a feedback on the dimensions of one of their models which is yet to be launched. Such studies help the company meet the demand of the customer and position their model appropriately in the market.

• Text analysis: Text analysis method is a little new compared to the other types. Such a method is used to analyse social life by going through images or words used by the individual. In today’s world, with social media playing a major part of everyone’s life, such a method enables the research to follow the pattern that relates to his study.

For example: A lot of companies ask for feedback from the customer in detail mentioning how satisfied are they with their customer support team. Such data enables the researcher to take appropriate decisions to make their support team better.

Sometimes a combination of the methods is also needed for some questions that cannot be answered using only one type of method especially when a researcher needs to gain a complete understanding of complex subject matter.

We recently published a blog that talks about examples of qualitative data in education ; why don’t you check it out for more ideas?

Since empirical research is based on observation and capturing experiences, it is important to plan the steps to conduct the experiment and how to analyse it. This will enable the researcher to resolve problems or obstacles which can occur during the experiment.

Step #1: Define the purpose of the research

This is the step where the researcher has to answer questions like what exactly do I want to find out? What is the problem statement? Are there any issues in terms of the availability of knowledge, data, time or resources. Will this research be more beneficial than what it will cost.

Before going ahead, a researcher has to clearly define his purpose for the research and set up a plan to carry out further tasks.

Step #2 : Supporting theories and relevant literature

The researcher needs to find out if there are theories which can be linked to his research problem . He has to figure out if any theory can help him support his findings. All kind of relevant literature will help the researcher to find if there are others who have researched this before, or what are the problems faced during this research. The researcher will also have to set up assumptions and also find out if there is any history regarding his research problem

Step #3: Creation of Hypothesis and measurement

Before beginning the actual research he needs to provide himself a working hypothesis or guess what will be the probable result. Researcher has to set up variables, decide the environment for the research and find out how can he relate between the variables.

Researcher will also need to define the units of measurements, tolerable degree for errors, and find out if the measurement chosen will be acceptable by others.

Step #4: Methodology, research design and data collection

In this step, the researcher has to define a strategy for conducting his research. He has to set up experiments to collect data which will enable him to propose the hypothesis. The researcher will decide whether he will need experimental or non experimental method for conducting the research. The type of research design will vary depending on the field in which the research is being conducted. Last but not the least, the researcher will have to find out parameters that will affect the validity of the research design. Data collection will need to be done by choosing appropriate samples depending on the research question. To carry out the research, he can use one of the many sampling techniques. Once data collection is complete, researcher will have empirical data which needs to be analysed.

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Step #5: Data Analysis and result

Data analysis can be done in two ways, qualitatively and quantitatively. Researcher will need to find out what qualitative method or quantitative method will be needed or will he need a combination of both. Depending on the unit of analysis of his data, he will know if his hypothesis is supported or rejected. Analyzing this data is the most important part to support his hypothesis.

Step #6: Conclusion

A report will need to be made with the findings of the research. The researcher can give the theories and literature that support his research. He can make suggestions or recommendations for further research on his topic.

A.D. de Groot, a famous dutch psychologist and a chess expert conducted some of the most notable experiments using chess in the 1940’s. During his study, he came up with a cycle which is consistent and now widely used to conduct empirical research. It consists of 5 phases with each phase being as important as the next one. The empirical cycle captures the process of coming up with hypothesis about how certain subjects work or behave and then testing these hypothesis against empirical data in a systematic and rigorous approach. It can be said that it characterizes the deductive approach to science. Following is the empirical cycle.

• Observation: At this phase an idea is sparked for proposing a hypothesis. During this phase empirical data is gathered using observation. For example: a particular species of flower bloom in a different color only during a specific season.
• Induction: Inductive reasoning is then carried out to form a general conclusion from the data gathered through observation. For example: As stated above it is observed that the species of flower blooms in a different color during a specific season. A researcher may ask a question “does the temperature in the season cause the color change in the flower?” He can assume that is the case, however it is a mere conjecture and hence an experiment needs to be set up to support this hypothesis. So he tags a few set of flowers kept at a different temperature and observes if they still change the color?
• Deduction: This phase helps the researcher to deduce a conclusion out of his experiment. This has to be based on logic and rationality to come up with specific unbiased results.For example: In the experiment, if the tagged flowers in a different temperature environment do not change the color then it can be concluded that temperature plays a role in changing the color of the bloom.
• Testing: This phase involves the researcher to return to empirical methods to put his hypothesis to the test. The researcher now needs to make sense of his data and hence needs to use statistical analysis plans to determine the temperature and bloom color relationship. If the researcher finds out that most flowers bloom a different color when exposed to the certain temperature and the others do not when the temperature is different, he has found support to his hypothesis. Please note this not proof but just a support to his hypothesis.
• Evaluation: This phase is generally forgotten by most but is an important one to keep gaining knowledge. During this phase the researcher puts forth the data he has collected, the support argument and his conclusion. The researcher also states the limitations for the experiment and his hypothesis and suggests tips for others to pick it up and continue a more in-depth research for others in the future. LEARN MORE: Population vs Sample

LEARN MORE: Population vs Sample

There is a reason why empirical research is one of the most widely used method. There are a few advantages associated with it. Following are a few of them.

• It is used to authenticate traditional research through various experiments and observations.
• This research methodology makes the research being conducted more competent and authentic.
• It enables a researcher understand the dynamic changes that can happen and change his strategy accordingly.
• The level of control in such a research is high so the researcher can control multiple variables.
• It plays a vital role in increasing internal validity .

Even though empirical research makes the research more competent and authentic, it does have a few disadvantages. Following are a few of them.

• Such a research needs patience as it can be very time consuming. The researcher has to collect data from multiple sources and the parameters involved are quite a few, which will lead to a time consuming research.
• Most of the time, a researcher will need to conduct research at different locations or in different environments, this can lead to an expensive affair.
• There are a few rules in which experiments can be performed and hence permissions are needed. Many a times, it is very difficult to get certain permissions to carry out different methods of this research.
• Collection of data can be a problem sometimes, as it has to be collected from a variety of sources through different methods.

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Empirical research is important in today’s world because most people believe in something only that they can see, hear or experience. It is used to validate multiple hypothesis and increase human knowledge and continue doing it to keep advancing in various fields.

For example: Pharmaceutical companies use empirical research to try out a specific drug on controlled groups or random groups to study the effect and cause. This way, they prove certain theories they had proposed for the specific drug. Such research is very important as sometimes it can lead to finding a cure for a disease that has existed for many years. It is useful in science and many other fields like history, social sciences, business, etc.

LEARN ABOUT: 12 Best Tools for Researchers

With the advancement in today’s world, empirical research has become critical and a norm in many fields to support their hypothesis and gain more knowledge. The methods mentioned above are very useful for carrying out such research. However, a number of new methods will keep coming up as the nature of new investigative questions keeps getting unique or changing.

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Introduction

Peter Cane is Senior Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge and Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Law at the Australian National University

Herbert Kritzer is the Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is Professor of Political Science and Law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published numerous articles and several books, including Risks, Reputations, and Rewards (Stanford UP: 2004) and is the co-editor, with Susan Silbey, of In Litigation: Do the 'Haves' Still Come Out Ahead? (Stanford UP: 2003).

• Published: 18 September 2012
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The Introduction starts by discussing the history of Empirical Legal Studies (ELS). It explains how the editors came about compiling this book. It talks about interest in empirical legal research and how it is not confimed to the United States, the UK or common law countries. Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Israel, Russia, and Japan are mentioned. This book aims to provide succinct discussions and analyses of debates, controversies, methods, and trends in scholarship that are original and searching but also easily accessible. The Introduction goes on to explain the perspective taken and coverage given in this book.

I n the American legal academy, empirical research gained contemporary prominence in the late 1990s. The early years of the first decade of the twenty-first century saw the emergence and rapid development of a movement that labeled itself “Empirical Legal Studies” (ELS). In the original proposal for this volume its title referred to “empirical legal studies.” However, as the project evolved we decided against associating it with ELS in particular. We thought it important explicitly to acknowledge the diversity of approaches to and sites of empirical investigation of law, legal systems, and other legal phenomena. In particular, there are at least three approaches and research groupings that predate the contemporary ELS movement, which may be respectively identified as socio-legal/law and society (an interdisciplinary movement with strong roots in sociology but including scholars from a wide range of traditional disciplines including law), empirically oriented law-and-economics, and judicial behavior /politics. While some researchers working in these traditions see themselves as part of the new ELS community, many others do not. The phrase “empirical legal research” in the title, The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research , is designed both to reflect and to celebrate the healthy pluralism of empirical approaches to the study of law and legal phenomena.

American legal realists were, perhaps, the first to appreciate the value and importance of, and to promote, study of “law in action” as opposed to “law on (or ‘in’) the books.” As described in Chapter 36 of this book, the earliest work in the United States included crime surveys in the 1920s and 1930s, and studies in the 1930s of court dockets and auto accident compensation. The genesis of empirically based studies of judicial behavior is commonly traced to the pioneering work of C. Hermann Pritchett in the late 1940s. Jury studies gained prominence through the Chicago jury project led by Harry Kalven and Hans Zeisel in the 1950s. In Britain, a major event in the development of empirical legal research was the establishment in 1972 of the ESRC-funded Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. The British Journal of Law and Society , now simply the Journal of Law and Society , first appeared two years later. At around the same time, the Royal Commission on Civil Liability and Compensation for Personal Injury, popularly known as the Pearson Commission, commissioned the first large-scale empirical investigation of the civil justice system in England and Wales, and this was soon followed by the work of the Royal Commission on Legal Services (the “Benson Commission”). The Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) was founded in 1990 to enable socio-legal scholars to meet and disseminate their work, much of which is empirical. The UK Home Office (like the U.S. Department of Justice) has been a major funder of research into the criminal justice system since the 1970s. UK universities now host various multi-disciplinary empirical legal research centres. In the United States, early centers of contemporary empirically oriented legal research included the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and the American Bar Foundation (with links to both Northwestern University and the University of Chicago). The Law and Society Association was founded in 1964, and the Law & Society Review , the journal of the Association, began publication in 1967. The Law and Courts section of the American Political Science Association was established around 1982. In recent years a growing number of U.S. law schools have attracted groups of empirically oriented scholars.

While empirical research on legal phenomena can be found throughout the twentieth century, in very recent years—as already noted—there has been a marked increase in the vibrancy of empirical legal research, particularly within the U.S. legal academy. In 2004 the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies was established, edited at Cornell Law School. This journal was designed specifically to appeal to legal academics doing or interested in empirical research. The First Annual Conference of Empirical Legal Studies was held at the University of Texas Law School in October 2006, and the ELS conference is now an annual event. The situation in the UK is somewhat different. November 2006 saw the publication of the Report of The Nuffield Inquiry on Empirical Legal Research entitled Law in the Real World: Improving our Understanding of How Law Works and written by Professor Dame Hazel Genn and Professors Martin Partington and Sally Wheeler. The motivation for the inquiry was a concern that despite high levels of activity in the empirical legal research community, there are not enough producers of empirical legal research in the UK to meet current and likely future demand, and that there may not be a “robust successor generation of trained empirical legal researchers” available to take the place of senior scholars likely to retire in the next decade or so. Although the report focused on research on the civil rather than the criminal side, it witnesses a perception of the growing importance of empirical legal research in all areas.

A lively interest in empirical legal research is by no means confined to the United States and the UK or to common law countries. There are active communities of empirical legal scholars in Australia and Canada. In the civil law world, empirical legal research conducted over the last 20 years or so can be found in a number of countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Israel, Russia, and Japan. International organizations such as the World Bank have sponsored empirical legal research in various countries (e.g., Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Georgia, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and Russia) in pursuit of the goal of improving legal systems as a means of encouraging economic investment and reducing poverty.

A feature of every truly successful intellectual movement is the ability to communicate its core ideas and methods, and the nature and significance of its achievements, to a wide audience beyond the movement's active practitioners. This is a task to which the broad community of empirical legal researchers has not so far devoted as much energy as it deserves. One of the important points made in the Nuffield Report is that there is no strong culture of empirical legal training and research in UK law schools. This is partly because there is a lack of empirical legal literature directed to “mainstream” legal scholars, many of whom remain more or less ignorant of the importance and value of empirical research and may find empirical legal scholarship difficult and somewhat mysterious. More generally, the lack of a widely appealing and accessible literature helps to explain why empirical legal research has a low profile in the UK legal academy and (except on the criminal side) is almost entirely absent from the law school curriculum. In the United States, law schools are just beginning to think about how empirical legal research activities can be integrated into the law school curriculum; and while texts on law and social science have been around since at least 1969, the first law school text intended specifically for courses on empirical legal studies, Empirical Methods in Law by Robert M. Lawless, Jennifer K. Robbennolt, and Thomas S. Ulen, appeared in late 2009.

Our aspiration is that this volume should make a significant contribution to informing and educating both scholars (whatever their disciplinary identification and in whatever research tradition they operate) and students—especially law students—about empirical legal research. It also aims to provide scholars who may be interested in undertaking empirical research about law with inspiration and resources for attempting the difficult transition from doctrinal or theoretical, library-based research to empirical research. More than that, we hope and expect that the book will find an audience beyond the academy in government, the public policy sector and the wider community.

The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research has been designed to promote a prime aim of the Oxford Handbook series, which is to provide succinct discussions and analyses of debates, controversies, methods, and trends in scholarship that are original and searching but also easily accessible to readers who are less familiar with the particular subject area. Handbooks aspire to challenge and stimulate the experienced and knowledgeable while at the same time informing and inspiring the uninitiated and the less experienced. Of course, there is already a large body of empirical legal literature, but on the whole it reports the results of particular empirical research projects, and its typical target audience consists of other empirical scholars. There is little truly outward-looking literature that aims to educate and inform a wider audience and to encourage the development of empirical research skills and activity by celebrating the achievements of empirical legal scholarship. This Handbook is designed to start the process of filling this gap in the literature.

It is important to say something about how we understand the term “empirical.” Many of those associated with the ELS movement that originated in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century equate empirical work with research that employs statistical and other quantitative methods. However, this understanding is by no means universal, and empirical legal research employing a mix of qualitative and quantitative social science methodologies long predates the contemporary ELS movement. Interestingly, the strongest advocates of equating “empirical” with “quantitative” are scholars within law faculties, many of whom lack advanced training in social science. Among those with social science training, whether in law faculties or social science faculties, “empirical” is usually understood to include both quantitative and qualitative approaches. This is not to say that some scholars trained in social science do not have strong preferences as between qualitative and quantitative approaches. However, while social science departments have long included statistics and quantitative research methods courses in their curriculums, in the past 20 years the number of courses devoted to qualitative methods has increased significantly in U.S. social science departments, particularly in the fields of sociology and political science.

In this volume, we have adopted a broad perspective on what constitutes “empirical” legal research. Specifically, we have sought to include both quantitative and qualitative social science research within the label “empirical legal research.” Nonetheless, readers of this Handbook will find that quantitative research dominates in many of the chapters (and that some chapters refer exclusively to quantitative research). To some extent, this dominance reflects the preferences of individual authors, but it is also a function of the nature of existing empirical research in particular areas.

For our purposes, “empirical” research involves the systematic collection of information (“data”) and its analysis according to some generally accepted method. Of central importance is the systematic nature of the process, both of collecting and analyzing the information. The information can come from a wide range of sources including surveys, documents, reporting systems, observation, interviews, experiments, decisions, and events. While the data can be retained as text or images, systematic analysis will often involve coding or tagging units of text or images using symbols that may or may not have numeric properties (in the sense that they can be manipulated algebraically, or compared in terms of absolute or relative size). The analysis can involve simple counting, sophisticated statistical manipulation, grouping into like sets, identification of sequences (in some circumstances called “process tracing”), matching of patterns, or simple labelling of themes. Ultimately, the analyst engages in a process of interpreting the results of the analysis in order to link those results to the question motivating the research. In some instances the interpretation flows clearly from the results, but in others it is more fragile and reflects not only the results of the analysis but also other information that the analyst brings to the work.

We have deliberately omitted from the project two categories of work that some might argue fall within the concept of “empirical” research we have described above. The first category comprises traditional historical studies. We have omitted legal history from the Handbook simply because it is a discrete, long-established field of research with its own norms, methodologies, and standards. Some empirical legal researchers use historical materials and may employ historiographical methods, but they tend not to label what they are doing as “legal history”. Typically such research begins with an hypothesis of the sort associated with social science and uses historical information as its data.

The second category of research we have omitted is traditional analysis of formal legal documents—primarily court decisions (“cases”) and legislative materials. One reason for omitting such work is that scholars who work primarily with documentary legal materials typically describe what they do as “legal analysis” rather than “empirical legal research.” Conversely, scholars who describe their research as “empirical” would typically not regard traditional legal analysis as empirical. Of course, this distinction between analytical and empirical legal research is not clear-cut, and there are many examples of scholarship that straddle the line between the two by going beyond the formal legal documents themselves to examine their broader social, economic and political context and operation. Conversely, formal legal documents may provide relevant data for empirical investigation of certain legal phenomena such as judicial behavior. If the relationship between analytical and empirical research is understood as a spectrum, this volume concentrates on work at the empirical end of that spectrum. Another reason for not including traditional analytical legal scholarship is that this genre of research is the subject matter of The Oxford Handbook of Legal Studies (2003).

In fairness to our authors, we need to say something about the brief they were given. They were asked to provide not surveys of the available research or literature reviews but rather concise, original, and critical discussions of work that they consider to have made a significant contribution to our understanding of the various topics covered in the Handbook . They were also asked to identify gaps in the extant body of research and possible topics for future research. Because this book is aimed at an international audience, our contributors were encouraged to cast their nets widely and not limit discussion to research done in their own country or concerned with their own legal system. That said, the common-law, English-speaking world has so far produced much more empirical legal research than the civil law world; and within the common law world, much more empirical research has been produced in the United States than anywhere else. These facts are reflected both in the list of contributors and in the substance of the various contributions. The reasons the United States dominates in this area (as in so many others) are, no doubt, various and complex. One may be that law is a graduate school in the U.S. tertiary education system, and the number of law faculty members holding both JDs and PhDs in some other discipline (particularly one of the social sciences) has risen sharply over the last 15 years. Another obvious explanation is that because courts in the United States are understood to be essentially political institutions, U.S. political scientists are much more interested in judges and judicial behavior than their counterparts in the rest of the common law world: Law and Courts is one of the largest Sections of the American Political Science Association. This general topic is one that deserves much more attention than it receives in this volume.

More technically, authors were asked to reduce the number of footnotes to an absolute minimum, and to write as accessibly as possible for the non-specialist reader. The Handbook is meant primarily not for established producers of empirical legal research but for consumers, potential consumers and aspiring producers. Contributors were expected to observe allocated word limits, which reflect arguably contestable editorial judgments about the relative quantity, significance and vibrancy of research in particular areas. It should also be emphasized that authors were asked to refer by name to no more than 50 pieces of scholarship. Some found this limitation irksome and challenging, although in the end all managed to work within or close to it. The rationales for the limit were to encourage contributors to give their own personal account of scholarship in their area and to relieve them of the need to be comprehensive or “balanced.” We wanted them to identify themes and trends rather than to recount or focus on individual pieces of research. Inevitably, there will be considerable room for disagreement about the items that should or should not have been included in the lists of references in the various chapters, and also about the various authors' perspectives on the bodies of research they discuss. The lists of references should not be thought of as encapsulating the authors' answers to some question such as “what are the fifty most important pieces of empirical research in your area?” Rather, the references will most likely have been chosen for their aptness to support the particular argument an author has chosen to make about scholarship in the field.

In planning the Handbook we tried to ensure coverage of all areas and legal phenomena on which a significant amount of empirical legal research has been conducted and reported. Inevitably, however, there are topics that might have been included but which did not make it into the book, some as a result of a judgment on our part that there did not seem to be a sufficient body of empirical work to warrant extended treatment, some because we did not think of them at the time we planned the volume, and some simply because we could not include everything.

One topic omitted because of lack of a body of relevant empirical research is antitrust/competition law. Interestingly, this is an area where empirical research is regularly employed to assess whether violations of law have occurred and to determine damages for such violations. There is a small body of literature about how to conduct empirical analyses for such use. However, we were unable to locate a substantial body of empirical research on the application or impact of antitrust/competition law, and hence we decided not to include a chapter on this topic. A second topic, which in retrospect we might have included, is legal consciousness, perhaps coupled with the closely related topic of legal culture. Both topics make an appearance in several chapters, but none is devoted entirely to them even though there is probably a sufficient literature to have justified a chapter, as well as a growing interest in the study of legal consciousness and how it can yield insights into legal culture.

A third area that, with the benefit of hindsight, was a strong contender for inclusion is insurance and insurance law. In practice, insurance is central to the operation of the law of personal injury compensation (which receives some attention in the chapter on personal injury litigation). However, it is also important in various other areas including corporate malfeasance, professional regulation, social welfare law, and environmental law. Moreover, insurance companies are themselves heavily regulated, and hence research on the success or failure of such regulation is of considerable significance.

Other topics that might have been covered include election law; intellectual property (patents, copyright, and trademark), and, more broadly, the interface between law, and science and technology; and tax law. We planned a chapter on the use of empirical methodologies in program and policy evaluation, but in the end were not able to include it. Individual readers will, perhaps, be able to identify other significant omissions. We accept full responsibility for inclusions and omissions while reiterating that this volume is intended as a first contribution to the promotion and wider dissemination of empirical legal research rather than the last word.

Our sincere thanks are due to John Louth, who was extremely supportive in the early planning stages, and to Alex Flach, who took over responsibility from John in the course of the project. We owe very special thanks the Ros Wallington who, as ever, provided efficient and cheerful administrative support; and to all those involved in the production of this major undertaking. But above all, we are indebted to those without whom this volume could not have been produced—our authors—not only for their excellent contributions but also for their patient and flexible responses to our numerous editorial demands and high expectations.

Peter Cane and Herbert M. Kritzer

Canberra and Minneapolis

February 2010

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