An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research

Lee Epstein is the Provost Professor of Law and Political Science and the Rader Family Trustee Chair in Law at the University of Southern California. She has previously held posts at Northwestern University and Washington University, St Louis. Professor Epstein has received twelve grants from the National Science Foundation for her work on law and legal institutions, and has authored or co-authored 15 books, including The Behavior of Federal Judges: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Rational Choice (2013, with W.M. Landes and R.A. Posner), the Constitutional Law for a Changing America books (with T.G. Walker), and The Choices Judges Make, with J. Knight, which won the Pritchett Award for the Best Book on Law and Courts and the 2010 Lasting Contribution Award "for a book or journal article, 10 years or older, that has made a lasting impression on the field of law and courts."Andrew Martin is Professor of Law and Dean at the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. He was previously the Founding Director of the Center for Empirical Research in the Law, and Professor of Political Science in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, St Luis. Professor Martin has received eight grants from the National Science Foundation, and is the author of numerous articles in prominent law and social science journals. Together with Professor Epstein he teaches the Annual Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship workshop, offering formal training in the design, conduct, and assessment of empirical studies and the use of statistical software to analyze and manage data.

• 1. Some Preliminaries ; PART I: DESIGNING RESEARCH ; 2. Questions, Theories, Observable Implications ; 3. Measurement ; PART II: COLLECTING AND CODING DATA ; 4. Collecting Data ; 5. Coding Data ; PART III: ANALYZING DATA ; 6. Summarizing Data ; 7. Statistical Interference ; 8. Regression Analysis: The Basics ; 9. Multiple Regression Analysis and Related Methods ; PART IV: COMMUNICATING DATA AND RESULTS ; 10. General Principles for Communicating and Visualizing Data ; 11. Strategies for Presenting Data and Statistical Results ; 12. Concluding Remarks ; Appendix A: Supplementary Materials