In addition, according to Deech, family law lawyers, particularly in the role of concilliator,[33] use empirical literature provided by sociologists. Family lawyers rely on the conclusions they believe they should draw from the work of social scientists. Family lawyers often base their reasoning on statistics to support their point of view. [34] Value can be described by the following questions: Does empirical research bring an advantage to legal research? Does empirical research on legal issues give us a better understanding of the law? Empirical courses at Harvard For students interested in courses on empirical research, many courses are offered at Harvard Law School, Kennedy School, and FAS. There are five tracks for students interested in empirical research methods, from courses suitable for those who do not have a background in empirical research to courses for students who have extensive methodological training. A description of these tracks can be found here and a list of courses offered on campus can be found in this file created by Jonathan Whittinghill. 4. What considerations should be taken into account in empirically sound research? It must be seen that empirical research is only added to the law of the black letter and that the skills of lawyers cannot be replaced by sociologists. Deech`s fear[51] that empirical legal research could gain too much influence is exaggerated. On the contrary, empirical legal research is not used in sufficient fields. So far, empiricists have mainly done research in areas such as criminal law, tort law, and family law. However, there are other areas of law that may have been enriched by empirical work. I think one of the reasons for the relatively small scope of empirical legal studies is that empirical methodology is compared relatively recently to the black letter approach in law.
At the beginning of empirical studies, empiricists found it difficult to accept. Therefore, there is a slow development of empirical methodology in law, which is not yet complete. First, for them, the predictions of the legal commissions based on empirical studies were often wrong. [40] The legal committees do not seem to have fully understood the figures presented by the empiricists. The effects of the new laws were contrary to the intentions of the legal commissions. Overview of quantitative methods created by Parina Patel Statistical Software Packages: Stata is a universal statistical software package popular with researchers in the fields of economics, sociology, political science, epidemiology and biomedicine, among others. Statisticians at Harvard Law School use Stata primarily for data analysis. The value of empirical studies in law has not yet been recognized.
Therefore, I believe that empirical work in legal education at the university is very important. From research design and data collection/creation to analysis and presentation of results, we help faculties work with empirical research. The methods used for empirical research are essentially the qualitative method – interview – and the quantitative method – questionnaire -. Both methods have advantages. For best results, it is often a good idea to combine the two methods. Empirical research on legal issues can be based on both primary (original) and secondary (from elsewhere) data. Bradley Wright and Robert Christensen, for example, use an original survey of law students in one study (Christensen and Wright, 2011) and survey data from the American Bar Association in another study (Wright and Christensen, 2010) to examine the impact of public service motivation on workplace choices. Other empirical works that influenced the behavior of the judiciary included work on child protection cases written by Brophy and public perceptions of justice written by Genn. [30] The use of questionnaires is a quantitative method. The study is carried out on a large scale and the information collected allows for a complex statistical analysis. [63] These types of methods can tell a lot about the weight of experience or opinion within a particular population group.
www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/genn/empirical/consultation/index.shtml?chpt2 Deech fears that empirical studies in law are no more valuable than they deserve. She was concerned that empirical research was becoming more important than legal aspects such as laws and regulations. She wants to prevent empirical legal research from being overestimated. Policymakers such as government departments in the UK have certain budgets to support empirical research on issues relevant to the ministry. In addition, empirical research is playing an increasingly important role in the training of students in law and other legal professions. More and more law schools are giving their students the opportunity to gain knowledge in empirical legal research and thus a vivid picture of a corner of the right. [35] In addition, law schools offer courses to professionals to explain the importance of empirical research and how to use it for their own work. In this way, law students and lawyers gain a better understanding of how law works in society. They are increasingly sensitive to these issues. In the United Kingdom, the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies is an important institution for social law research. The Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies is staffed by lawyers, social scientists and researchers from other disciplines who work together.