Empirical Research Support

To assist law faculty with empirical scholarship, the Law Library has hired an empirical research analyst with a Ph.D. to provide support. Among the services the consultant can provide are assistance with:

• Data gathering: help in determining the best way to gather the data you need or pointing you to available data sets
• Data analysis: utilize empirical research methodology and tools to verify statistical validity of data and "slice and dice" it to pull out relevant information
• Survey creation & evaluation: assist with crafting surveys that will get to the heart of the questions you are trying to answer or evaluate existing surveys and responses
• Research Assistant training: guide R.A.s in conducting empirical research for faculty projects

The empirical consultant will be available here at the Law School 10 hours a week. To request empirical assistance, please contact Nicole Downing by email (ndowning@email.unc.edu) or by phone at 919-843-7898 to arrange an appointment to discuss your project. Please provide the following information:

1. A general description of the project
2. The type of support you seek (e.g. data gathering, data analysis, etc)
3. The time period you anticipate needing assistance - please note any relevant time constraints or deadlines for the project
4. Any other information you think relevant

This service is provided in cooperation with Duke's Goodson Law Library.

The library has also provided a detailed set of resources that are available online for those interested in engaging in empirical legal scholarship.

Getting started with empirical legal research (ELS) at UNC

UNC Libraries maintains a number of tutorials, guides, and resource lists for conducting empirical research generally. These include:

• Odum Institute at UNC provides assistance with specialized and general statistical models, as well as short and long courses on software and statistical methods.
• Writing with Statistics is a useful guide, put together by UNC, on addressing pitfalls associated with using statistics in writing.
• UNC Libraries GIS and Data Services provides spatial and numerical data. To facilitate the use of these collections, GIS/Data Services will provide classroom training, support online learning, and provide access to GIS computing.

ELS Research Support and Research Guides

• ELS Blog: A blog about current scholarship, events, grants, and general discussions of issues associated with empirical legal scholarship.
• Journal of Empirical Legal Studies: JELS is the flagship journal of The Society for Empirical Legal Scholarship and publishes cutting edge ELS scholarship. The Society also sponsors an annual meeting, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, with proceedings available online.
• UCLA's Empirical Research Group: The Empirical Research Group at UCLA specializes in designing quantiative legal scholarship and runs the ELS Bibliography, which is a is a searchable catalog of empirical legal scholarship. The collection has been assembled by scholars and librarians at UCLA and Cornell and extends back to 2005.
• Center for Empirical Legal Research in the Law at Washington University Law: CERL supports the use of innovating and cutting edge methods in legal scholarship.
• UC Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Program website, which maintains an extensive web guide to available ELS data sources.
• Georgetown Law Library's Statistics and Empirical Legal Studies Research Guide provides an excellent starting point for engaging in empirical legal scholarship.
• J. Michael Goodson Law Library's ELS Website is a comprehensive collection of data sources and research guides on ELS.
• University College London's Centre for Empirical Legal Studies provides an international perspective to understanding ELS.
• Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Science Research provides helpful research guides and a large catalog of ELS data sets.
• American Political Science Association Law and the Courts data set listings

Data Sources for Empirical Legal Scholarship

Several of the above guides have more comprehensive lists of ELS-relevant data sets. Below is a listing of some of the most commonly used ELS data sets in the areas of Courts, Crime & Justice, the Legislative Branch & Politics, Business and Economics, Demographic, and International data sets.

Courts

• Federal Courts
  • US Federal Courts: Statistics (Caseloads, case management statistics, business of the court)
  • Bankruptcy Statistics
  • Bankruptcy Research Database
  • ABA's Ratings of Judicial Nominees
  • Biographical Directory of Federal Judges
  • Attributes of U.S. Federal Judges (Univ. of South Carolina historical database)
  • Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court
  • United States Supreme Court Judicial Database, 1953-1997 Terms
• State Courts
  • State Supreme Court Data Project
  • Bureau of Justice Statistics: State Court Organization
  • National Center for State Courts: Data

Crime & Justice

• Bureau of Prisons
• Bureau of Justice Statistics
• FBI's Uniform Crime Reports
• Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
• National Criminal Justice Reference Service
• National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

Legislative Branch and Politics

• American National Elections Study
• The Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
• Open Secret's Data on Campaign Contributions and Lobbying
• CQ Electronic Library (UNC ACCESS)
• Congressional Budget Office
• Census of Governments
• Congress.gov

Business and Economics Data

• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Economic Census
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Data
• Federal Trade Commission
• SEC Edgar Database
• National Bureau of Economics Research Data
• U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
• U.S. Census' County Business Patterns

Demographics

• American Fact-Finder
• U.S. Census Bureau
• Housing and Urban Development data
• State Comparison Statistics

International

• Barometer Sites
  • Afrobarometer
  • Eurobarometer
  • Latin American Public Opinion Project
• Correlates of War
• International Monetary Fund Data and Statistics
• United Nations Statistics Division
• US Department of Defense Data
• World Health Organization
• Worldbank

Last updated 7/15/2014 (drh)