Foreword: The 2019 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies

• Author: Eric Helland,Dan Krauss,David Bjerk
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12273
• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Volume 17, Issue 4, 644–645, December 2020

Foreword: The 2019 Conference on

Empirical Legal Studies

David Bjerk, Eric Helland*, and Dan Krauss

On November 15 and 16, 2019, several hundred scholars from across the United States

and the globe gathered in Claremont, California, for the 14th Annual Conference on

Empirical Legal Studies (CELS). During its 14-year history, CELS has become a key distri-

bution point for empirical legal scholarship. Claremont McKenna College was proud to

be the f‌irst liberal arts college and the f‌irst non law school to host this event.

CELS interdisciplinary nature is what makes it such a valuable forum for researchers

to present their work. The 2019 conference was no exception. The paper presenters, dis-

cussants, and attendees encompassed legal scholars, f‌inance professors, economists, politi-

cal scientists, psychologists, criminologists, and sociologists. With this broad range of

disciplines represented, the conference’s papers addressed widely disparate topics. The

meeting began with a preconference workshop on randomized control trials led by Jim

Greiner, April Faith-Slaker, and Chris Griff‌in of Harvard’s Access to Justice Lab and Mat-

thew McCubbin of Duke University. The conference’s usual networking was also sup-

plemented by a breakfast meeting focusing on women’s rolein empirical legal studies.

The conference continued CELS’ unique presentation format. A peer-review pro-

cess selected papers, and then the organizers assigned a discussant for each paper. As has

been true of past CELS, the discussants took their roles very seriously, and authors had

the opportunity to hear detailed feedback from an experienced scholar in their f‌ield.

The poster session is always a valuable centerpiece for CELS, and 2019 continued

this tradition. Each year, the poster session features an award—the 2019 Theodore

Eisenberg Poster Award—for the best poster. Ted Eisenberg was a key empirical legal

scholar and a founding editor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. This year’s award

went to Uyen Le (with Greg DeAngelo, Maryah Garner, and Shuichiro Nishioka) for their

paper “Lost Jobs, Lost Lives: The Effects of Unemployment Shocks and Gun Laws on

Suicides.”

*Address correspondence to Eric A. Helland, William F. Podlich Professor of Economics, George R. Roberts Fel-

low, Claremont McKenna College, Department of Economics, 500 E. 9th Street, Claremont, CA 91711; Email: eric.

helland@cmc.edu.Bjerk, Helland, and Krauss were 2019 Co-Presidents of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.

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