I have some thoughts on CELS on my return from LA (as well as a picture).
There's so much stuff at this conference that one might wonder if it's a granfalloon. David Zaring thinks so:
[I]t strikes me that ELS has a number of different constituencies, and the common cause among them is not always obvious.
I sympathize with David's observation. There's not a lot linking, say, survey data on how people feel about being cheated with a study crunching CRSP data on a corporate governance issue.
On the other hand, I think CELS has an important role to play in inserting some discipline into what I've referred to in private conversations as the empirical legal scholarship "bubble."
Legal scholars once decried too much untested theorizing. That time is long gone. Legal academics' discovery of empirical research has given rise to the greatest explosion of intellectual entrepreneurship since Al Gore created the Internet. Now instead of untested hypotheses we get unhypothesized tests. We also get some tests that could be characterized as the intellectual equivalent of pets.com (although thankfully little of this bad stuff at CELS itself).
Ted Eisenberg's keynote address attacking the Chamber of Commerce's court ranking highlighted the need for discipline. But data distortion by interest groups is not exactly a new thing. And something like the truth is likely to emerge even without CELS from interest group competition and robust media.
I think the greater need is self-discipline in a community of scholars that is becoming rapidly more diverse as folks trained in all kinds of disciplines mingle with legal scholars like me. That, I think, is CELS's "common cause." It is furthered by bringing scholars together once a year to focus on methodology and to weed out the bad methods from the good ones. One of CELS's key contributions to discipline is assigning a discussant to each talk. The discussants I saw were well-prepared, and many (including me) brought slides. I hope CELS continues to thrive, and that its emphasis on rigor helps to tame the empirical bubble.
I would like to see two other developments. First, the data is starting to outstrip the theory. The empirical bubble has encouraged scholars to go right to the data, sometimes without developing the theory adequately for a good empirical test.
One problem here is that the good theory people are not always good empiricists. This leads to my second wish: more humility by both empiricists and theoreticians, and more co-authorship. The empirical bubble has made empirical articles more publishable, which tempts theory people into empirical territory they're not ready to navigate. And of course empirical scholars may be tempted to collect all of the rents. CELS can help bring the two types of specialists together, and to persuade them that they need each other.
As Key said in Hustle and Flow:
There are two types of people: those that talk the talk and those that walk the walk. People who walk the walk sometimes talk the talk but most times they don't talk at all, 'cause they walkin'. Now, people who talk the talk, when it comes time for them to walk the walk, you know what they do? They talk people like me into walkin' for them.
Which I think is a good thing.
Update: Josh Wright responds, suggesting more collaborations of a slightly different type.
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