Oxford LibGuides: United States: legal resources: Empirical Legal Research

Empirical Legal Research in US law

Epstein & King : 'Building An Infrastructure for Empirical Research in the Law'
Remote access requires an Oxford SSO. Article in (US) (2003) 53 Journal of Legal Education 311

The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research by Peter Cane (Editor); Herbert Kritzer (Editor)
Call Number: Holders of an Oxford SSO can read this online via title link.
ISBN: 9780199542475
Publication Date: 2010
Print copy is at KL155.OXF 2010
Conducting Law and Society Research by Simon Halliday; Patrick Schmidt
Call Number: Holders of an Oxford SSO can read this online via title link.
ISBN: 9780521720427
Publication Date: 2009
Reference copy at BLL Ref Bibl General H188a. SSL has lending copies at K85.HAL 2009
Trial by Numbers : A Lawyer's Guide to Statistical Evidence by Adam Chilton; Kyle Rozema
Call Number: Holders of an Oxford SSO can read this online via title link
ISBN: 9780197747858
Publication Date: 2024
"Trial by Numbers provides an easy way for members of the legal profession to acquire a basic understanding of the most common methods that serve as the building blocks for empirical evidence in academic articles, policy briefs, and expert witness reports. Adam Chilton and Kyle Rozema take a different approach to other introductory books on empirical methods, omitting the formulas and equations found in other books, and instead focusing on explaining the intuition and logic of common empirical methods. The work also exclusively use examples that are relevant to law school and legal practice."

Empirical Legal Studies
US Blog Editors Carolyn Shapiro, Christopher Zorn, Dawn M. Chutkow, Michael Heise

Designing Social Inquiry by Gary King; Robert O. Keohane; Sidney Verba
Call Number: Holders of an Oxford SSO can read this online via title link
ISBN: 0691034702
Publication Date: 1994
A print copy is in the Social Science Library H61.KIN if preferred

Potential Sources for US Supreme Court Studies

"The Supreme Court Database (SCDB) is the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Database contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2016 terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices."

United States SCDB: 101
Open access. If you have not used this db before - use this link first to find the basic lessons showing "how to use the online data analysis tool."
United States SCDB: Analysis search screen
Open Access. Washtington University Law project
US Supreme Court Opinion Writing Db SCOWD
OA resource "The information on this website parts the curtain to reveal the inner-workings of the Supreme Court during its opinion-writing process." Ctd in More
more...less...
The information is presented in two formats. First, one can access the data electronically in the form of a spreadsheet from the Dataset Archive page. In that format, one can access data on each document, namely, the identity of the authoring Justice, the recipients, the date of the document, the case(s) related to the document, and a coding of the document's content. Second, one can view the scanned images of the documents from the Document Archive page. There are several search fields provided, including case name, docket numbers, document content, term, and Justice.

The documents on this website provide an opportunity for researchers, teachers, students, and the general public to view the process by which landmark and other decisions were crafted. It will reveal the bargaining and accommodation that transpires in the opinion-writing process "
United States Supreme Court Forecasting 2002
Open access. Washington University Law project "during the Court's 2002 term, we conducted a study where we predicted the outcome of each argued case. Two methods of prediction were used, and we compared their relative accuracy. The results of the study have been published in the May 2004 issue of the Columbia Law Review. The study was also featured in a Symposium in Persepctives on Politics. We contrasted a statistical forecasting model (based on information derived from past Supreme Court decisions and certain characteristics of each pending case) with forecasts provides by legal experts (each of whom is an expert in some area of the Supreme Court's docket and many of whom clerked at the Court)."

Potential Sources for other US court studies

The Judicial Research Initiative (JuRI)
Sponsored by the University of South Carolina
This site allows users to download electronic datasets of court cases, including Federal Courts of Appeals cases, obtain smaller datasets or measures of judicially relevant phenomena, read various working papers on important topics, and link to other websites containing law and judicial politics information. Also contains data for foreign high courts.

United States Judiciary

United States, Court Listener Judicial Database
Open access "The CourtListener Judicial database was formed as partnership with researcher Elliott Ash at Princeton University and with support from the National Science Foundation and Knight Foundation.
The database has information about thousands of judges from federal and state courts, including their biographical and educational background, judicial and non-judicial positions held, political affiliations, American Bar Association ratings, campaign finance data, and opinions authored."

Data

Please see Oxford University's Guidance on Research data management (RDM) for how you should "organize, structure, store, and care for the information used or generated during [your] research project."

Research Data Oxford
Official website with essential reading for OU members engaged in research involving data.

Help with discovering existing sources of data

Data and Statistics for Social Sciences
by John Southall Last Updated Mar 21, 2025 712 views this year