12 Nov Empirical Legal Studies and International Law
This past weekend was the second annual Empirical Legal Studies Conference at NYU. I had a colleague attend and he said it was an outstanding conference. Plenty of empirical research on courts, corporations, criminal law, bankruptcy, intellectual property, torts, securities, etc.
But if you looked on the program for something on international law, you would come up disappointed. There was one panel featuring Allison Danner and Beth Simmons discussing this paper on the International Criminal Court, but beyond that nothing else relating to international law on the program.
It would seem that empiricism continues to be a poor step-child in the international legal academy and that empiricists are ignoring a field ripe for harvest. Why the dearth of empirical research on international law, especially given the prevalence of empiricism in international relations scholarship?
It was an outstanding conference as was last year’s affair in Austin. There were a couple of comparative law papers but I too was disappointed with the dearth of IL. As I understand it from the organizers, there simply weren’t very many IL submissions. I hope this doesn’t set a trend that make leads people to perceive CELS as a domestic affair.
I wonder how much of this is the European influence in international law. Europeans are very skeptical of any economic-based approach to the law, from econometrics to rational choice. Seems like this may retard the growth of empirical studies.