Foreword: The 2018 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies

• Date: 01 December 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12240
• Published date: 01 December 2019

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Volume 16, Issue 4, 692–692, December 2019

Foreword: The 2018 Conference on

Empirical Legal Studies

James Hines, J.J. Prescott*, and Sonja Starr

The University of Michigan Law School hosted the 13th Conference on Empirical Legal

Studies (CELS) in Ann Arbor, MI, in November 2018. The conference featured

104 papers and 17 posters on exciting and diverse topics in empirical legal research, and

the festivities included special plenary sessions on (1) replication studies and their role in

empirical legal scholarship and (2) various data troves at the University of Michigan Insti-

tute for Social Research.

The conference drew participants from many academic disciplines and from

around the world. All papers submitted to CELS 2018 were given critical peer review,

capacity permitting well less than one-third of those initially submitted to be presented at

the conference. A hallmark of CELS is the high-quality discussion of each presented

paper at the conference; CELS 2018 was no exception, with more than 100 discussants

bringing thoughtful and constructive suggestions to the table, often from different disci-

plinary perspectives.

The poster session was a highlight of CELS 2018, with Natasha Sarin (University of

Pennsylvania) walking away with the richly deserved Theodore Eisenberg Poster Award

for her poster, “The Impact of the Durbin Amendment on Banks, Merchants, and

Customers.”

A small number of the papers presented at CELS 2018 were selected for publica-

tion in this special issue. These papers were subject to a second round of peer review and

the editing process of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. The papers in this special issue

exhibit the breadth, depth, and relevance of the empirical legal scholarship that was on

vivid display at CELS 2018.

The University of Michigan Law School is honored to have been given the opportu-

nity to host CELS 2018, and we are very pleased to see leading examples of the papers

presented there appear in this issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.

*Address correspondence to J.J. Prescott, Henry King Ransom Professor of Law, University of Michigan School of

Law, 625 South State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109; email: jprescott@umich.edu. Hines, Prescott, and Starr were

CELS 2018 Co-Presidents.

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