![handle is hein.journals/tulr90 and id is 49 raw text is:
DISCIPLINING LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP
These escalations of method have reduced scholarly production
in three ways. First, larger, more sophisticated studies require that
researchers devote more time to each study, which results in the
production of fewer studies. For example, entry-level Ph.D. hiring is
often based on a single empirical study-the candidate's dissertation-
that may have taken years to produce. Second, the increasing demand
for sophistication deters scholars who would otherwise have done
studies requiring less sophistication. Third, maintaining and defending
their sophistication absorb researchers' time.'
Prominent legal empiricists have expressed concern that
minimum methodological standards impair the ability of law
professors to deliver research to policymakers in time for it to be
considered.6 or to deliver it at all.7 Sophisticated methodology may
also detract from the effectiveness of work by bureaucratizing it,8
rendering it unintelligible to persons outside the immediate field' and
perhaps rendering it too time-consuming for even persons in the
immediate field to read.
Neither law schools nor any other part of the university can
entirely avoid the escalation of method.2° Some problems actually
require sophisticated methodology. But by hiring fewer Ph.D.s in
69 OHno ST. L.J. 1173, 1212 (2008) (stating that the study was arguably the largest study ever
conducted).
115. See Epstein & King, supra note 20, at 118 (advocating the development of a
subfield of methodology within law).
116. E.g., Stewart Macaulay, Contracts, New Legal Reah'sm, and Improving the
Navigation olThe Yellow Submarine, 80 TuL. L. REv. 1161, 1185 n.99 (2006) (Often we are
faced with a choice between doing nothing and relying on assumed facts or publishing a
study that other scholars cannot precisely replicate. Epstein and King write as if they
advocate doing nothing when our informants are unwilling to go on the record.); id at 1188
(We cannot insist on ideal methods and ideal data when the alternative is speculation (even
when the speculation comes packaged as fancy theory)... ).
117. Jack Goldsmith & Adrian Vermeule, Empirical Methodology and Legal
Scholarship, 69 U. CHi. L. REv. 153, 165 (2002) (A universal insistence on Epstein and
King's version of methodological rigor might require making all studies less timely, thereby
eliminating studies that are both timely and accurate.).
118. For example, one scholar proposed requiring that all legal empiricists make the
same specified disclosures in reporting empirical results. Gregory Mitchell, Empir'calLegal
Scholarship as Scientitic Dialogue, 83 N.C. L. REV. 167, 200 (2004) ([B]ecause we cannot
rely on law professor authors and law review editors to discern what specific disclosures
should be included to meet the replication norm, a better approach is to specify a set of well-
defined, easily-implemented, mandatory rules to guide disclosure in empirical legal research
reports.). That requirement alone would make pervasive empiricism impossible.
119. See Balkin, supra note 3, at 967 ([M]uch of the most important new work [in
law and economics] is increasingly incomprehensible to the remainder of the legal
professoriat').
120. See id ([L]aw and economics has become an important specialty of legal
research that demands increasingly specialized training to do important new work.').
2015]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/tulr90&div=5
&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most