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83 N.C. L. Rev. 167 (2004-2005)
Empirical Legal Scholarship as Scientific Dialogue

handle is hein.journals/nclr83 and id is 181 raw text is: EMPIRICAL LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP AS SCIENTIFIC DIALOGUE GREGORY MITCHELL* This Essay considers how the scientific status of empirical legal scholarship might be enhanced. The leading proposal for making empirical legal research more scientific is to move to a system of peer review for research reports. Although a move to pre-publication peer review might well improve the quality of empirical legal research, the probability of a widespread adoption of peer review by law reviews is low. A more feasible reform is for law reviews to adopt a set of stringent disclosure requirements designed to foster critical review and replication of empirical legal research. Adherence to such disclosure rules would increase the objectivity of empirical legal research by forcing researchers to commit publicly to definite empirical propositions in reproducible terms and would facilitate the systematic accumulation of knowledge about legal phenomena using meta- analysis. IN TRO DUCTION .......................................................................................... 168 I. THE NEED FOR DISCLOSURE IN EMPIRICAL LEGAL SCHO LARSH IP ................................................................................. 180 A. The Centrality of Publicity and Transparency to the Objectivity and Progress of Science ....................................... 180 B. Disclosure Norms in Social Scientific Research ..................... 188 C. Disclosure Norms in Legal Research ..................................... 194 II. A PROPOSAL FOR INSTITUTIONALLY-IMPOSED DISCLOSURE R EQUIRE M ENTS .............................................................................. 197 C O N CLU SIO N ............................................................................................. 204 Without the trial-by-fire of peer review, how can journalists and the public possibly know which discoveries are credible, which are nothing more than acts of self-promotion by ambitious researchers, * Associate Professor, Florida State University College of Law, and Visiting Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University Law School. B.A., 1988, University of Arkansas; M.A. (Psychology), 1990, J.D., 1993, Ph.D. (Psychology), 1994, University of California, Berkeley. The author may be contacted by e-mail at gmitchel@law.fsu.edu or by regular mail at Florida State University College of Law, 425 West Jefferson Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1601. Thanks to Lee Epstein, Michael Heise, Peter Oh, and Jim Rossi for their helpful comments.

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