Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Empirical Legal Studies

Empirical legal studies uses social science tools to examine law and legal institutions. These tools can include:

How can you learn about this diverse field? What are the leading works, what organizations work in the area, where are there standard datasets to use? A librarian at Fordham has prepared an excellent guide: Alissa Black-Dorward, Empirical Research (posted April 1, 2011). Tabs lead you to

  • General Materials

  • Statistical Software and Instruction

  • Survey Research

  • Banking

  • Courts, Judges & Lawyers

  • Crime and Criminal Justice

  • Economics, Business & Finance

  • Environment

  • Evidence

  • Foreign & International

  • Health

  • Intellectual Property

  • Social Science Statistics

  • State Statistics
Some of the information in the guide is tailored to Fordham, but you can find the equivalent here. For instance, our library has many of the books cited (although perhaps with different call numbers) and the UW has its own Human Subjects Division for ensuring ethical practices. ---------------------------------- This post is copied from Gallagher Blogs, on the assumption that many readers of Trial Ad Notes don't read the law library's blog (although you're welcome to, of course) but would be interested in this topic.

No comments: