Seminar – 3 hours. An increasingly popular trend in legal scholarship is the use of quantitative data to inform legal theories and socio-political debates. Indeed, it is rare today to come across a law review article or Supreme Court opinion that does not reference or rely upon some analysis of data to make a legal argument. Therefore, being able to be a critical consumer of empirical legal analysis is a skill that every lawyer should have. In this class, you will learn to be *both* a critical consumer and producer of empirical legal scholarship. This class is geared toward students who already have a basic understanding of statistics at the undergraduate level. (Students who have taken Law and Statistics (Law 228C) qualify). The class has two parts. In the first part, you will learn about research design by reading a series of scholarly papers within empirical legal studies. In the second part of the class, I will lead you through the process of completing your own empirical research project. In the process, you will define your research question, conduct a review of the relevant literature, collect your own data, analyze your data using the statistical analysis software STATA, and finally write up your results in a non-technical way for lay audience. Your final product will be a research prospectus that will include two or three original tables or charts that directly respond to your research question. All students will present their research prospectuses to the class.
Law 228C Law and Statistics or a previous undergraduate class in statistics is highly recommended.
Final Assessment: Paper
Grading Mode: Letter Grading
Graduation Requirements: May satisfy Advanced Writing Requirement with instructor's permission.
Graduation Requirements: Satisfies the Bias, Antiracism and Cultural-Competency requirement.