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.
Introduction
Part I: Surveying Empirical Literature
1. Martin Innes: Policing
2. Wesley Skogan: Crime and Criminals
3. Jacqueline Hodgson and Andrew Roberts: Criminal Process and Prosecution
4. Antony Bottoms and Andrew von Hirsch: The Crime-Preventive Impact of Penal
Sanctions
5. Sally Wheeler: Contracts and Corporations
6. Julia Black: Financial Markets
7. Steve Meili: Consumer Protection
8. Elizabeth Warren and Robert Lawless: Bankruptcy and Insolvency
9. Linda Haller: Regulating the Professions
10. Paul Fenn and Neil Rickman: Personal
Injury Litigation
11. Herbert Kritzer: Claiming Behaviour as Legal Mobilization
12. Mavis Maclean: Families
13. Simon Deakin: Labour and Employment Laws
14. David Cowan: Housing and Property
15. Linda Camp-Keith: Human Rights Instruments
16. David Law: Constitutions
17.
Michael Adler: Social Security and Social Welfare
18. Bridget Hutter: Occupational Safety and Health
19. Cary Coglianese and Catherine Courcy: The Environment
20. Simon Halliday and Colin Scott: Administrative Justice
21. Roderick Macdonald: Access to Civil Justice
22. Peter
Russell: Judicial Recruitment, Training, and Careers
23. Sharyn Roach Anleu and Kathy Mack: Trial Courts and Adjudication
24. David Robertson: Appellate Courts
25. Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Alternative Dispute Resolution
26. Neil Vidmar: Lay Decision-Makers in the Legal Process
27.
Gary Edmond and David Hamer: Evidence Law
28. Carrie Menkel-Meadow and Bryant Garth: Civil Procedure and Courts
29. Chrisopher Hodges: Collective Actions
30. Catalina Smulovitz: Law and Courts on Development and Democratization
31. Gregory Shaffer and Tom Ginsburg: How Does
International Law Work?
32. Richard Moorhead: Lawyers and Other Legal Service Providers
33. Margaret Davies: Legal Pluralism
34. James Gibson: Public Images and Understandings of Court
35. Fiona Cownie: Legal Education and the Legal Academy
Part II: Doing and Using Empirical
Legal Research
36. Herbert Kritzer: The (Nearly) Forgotten Early Empirical Legal Research
37. Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin: Quantitative Approaches to Empirical Legal Research
38. Lisa Webley: Qualitative Approaches to Empirical Legal Research
39. Laura Beth Nielsen: The Need
for Multi-Method Approaches in Empirical Legal Research
40. Denis Galligan: Legal Theory and Empirical Research
41. Martin Partington: Empirical Legal Research and Policymaking
42. Antony Bradney: The Place of Empirical Legal Research in the Law School Curriculum
43. Christine
Harrington and Sally Merry: Empirical Legal Training in the US Academy
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Peter Cane is Professor of Law and Director of the John Fleming Centre Advancement of Legal Research, College of Law, Australian National University. He is the author of the Clarendon Law Series title Administrative Law (OUP 4th edition 2004); Principles of Administrative Law (co-authored
with Leighton McDonald, OUP, 2008); Responsibility in Law and Morality (Hart, 2003); and is the co-editor of several volumes, including The New Oxford Companion to Law (co-edited by Joanne Conaghan, OUP, 2008). 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).
