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SSRN-Hustle and Flow: A Social Network Analysis of the American Federal Judiciary by Daniel Katz, Derek Stafford
"Scholars have long asserted that social structure is an important feature of a variety of societal institutions. As part of a larger effort to develop a fully integrated model of judicial decision making, we argue that social structure-operationalized as the professional and social connections between judicial actors-partially directs outcomes in the hierarchical federal judiciary.
Since different social structures impose dissimilar consequences upon outputs, the precursor to evaluating the doctrinal consequences that a given social structure imposes is a descriptive effort to characterize its properties. Given the difficulty associated with obtaining appropriate data for federal judges, it is necessary to rely upon a proxy measure to paint a picture of the social landscape. In the aggregate, we believe the flow of law clerks reflects a reasonable proxy for social and professional linkages between jurists. Having collected available information for all federal judicial law clerks employed by an Article III judge during the "natural" Rehnquist Court (1995-2004), we use these roughly 19,000 clerk events to craft a series of network based visualizations.
Using network analysis, our visualizations and subsequent analytics provide insight into the path of peer effects in the federal judiciary. For example, we find the distribution of "degrees" is highly skewed implying the social structure is dictated by a small number of socially prominent actors. Using a variety of centrality measures, we identify these socially prominent jurists. Next, we draw from the extant complexity literature and offer a possible generative process responsible for producing such inequality in social authority. While the complete adjudication of a generative process is beyond the scope of this article, our results contribute to a growing literature documenting the highly-skewed distribution of authority across the common law and its constitutive institutions. "
SSRN-Beyond Methods - Law & Society in Action by Patrick Schmidt , Simon Halliday
This essay is the introductory chapter of a book about research methods in the field of law and society (Halliday, S. and Schmidt, P., Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Through interviews with many of the most noteworthy authors of law and society, Conducting Law and Society Research takes readers behind the scenes of empirical scholarship, showing the messy reality of the research process. The challenges and the uncertainties, so often missing from research methods textbooks, are revealed in candid detail. The accessible and revealing conversations about the lived reality of classic projects will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to those embarking on empirical research, ranging across the full array of disciplines that contribute to law and society. In this introductory essay, we argue for greater candor in discussing the messiness of empirical research methods, particularly in the field of law and society which has for many years explored the gap between rules and reality. We also examine the role which luck (both good and bad) plays in empirical research. Ultimately, we suggest that narratives of the research process such as the conversations contained in the book are a necessary complement to research methods textbooks. They reveal, in powerful ways, that 'good research' displays not an absence of problems but the care taken in negotiating them.
Jon Elster, "Excessive Ambitions", Capitalism and Society vol 4, no. 2 (2009)
The current financial crisis has brought out a fatal flaw in the foundations of the economic theories that guided economic agents and regulators: the unwarranted claim to precision and robustness. In this article I try to diagnose this flaw and discuss possible remedies. I argue that actual agents are intrinsically less sophisticated than the models assume they are, and that the various proposals to sustain the models by appealing to "as-if rationality" all fail. I next consider behavioral economics as an alternative to the standard models, claiming that while they may allow for successful retrodiction, they do not hold out much promise for prediction. I also discuss the use of statistical models, arguing that they are subject to so many traps and pitfalls that only a handful of elite practitioners can be trusted to use them well. Finally, I offer some speculations to explain the persistence in the economic profession and elsewhere of these useless or harmful models.
Roger Cotterrell, The Struggle for Law: Some Dilemmas of Cultural Legality
Second Annual International Law in Context Lecture, Georgetown University
SSRN-The Struggle for Law: Some Dilemmas of Cultural Legality by Roger Cotterrell
What general challenges are posed for legal thought by multiculturalism? Until relatively recently, modern jurists (as contrasted with sociolegal scholars) have not devoted much attention to cultural diversity as an issue for legal theory, or to asking ge
Peer Zumbansen, Law's Knowledge and Law's Effectiveness: Reflections from Legal Sociology and Legal Theory by Peer Zumbansen
Legal sociology is in a crisis - or so it is said. The field is not widely represented at Law Faculties today and, the claim goes, is in dire need of a new spirit. Meanwhile, scholars who are working in the area cover a wide array of research questions, r
Mary Matsuda, Law and Culture in the District Court of Honolulu, 1844-1845: A Case Study of the Rise of Legal Consciousness
32 Am. J. Legal Hist. 16 (1988)
John Conley
27 Loy. L. A. L. Rev. 41 (1993-1994) Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heinonline.org%2FHOL%2FPage%3Fpublic%3Dfalse%26handle%3Dhein.journals%2Flla27%26men_hide%3Dfalse%26men_tab%3Dcitnav%26collection%3Djournals%26page%3D41
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Legal Anthropology Comes Home: A Brief History of the Ethnographic Study of Law
Stuart Scheingold, Radical Lawyers and Socialist Ideals
Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 122-138
Scott Cummings & Ann Southworth, Between Profit and Principle: The Private Public Interest Firm by Scott Cummings, Ann Southworth
This chapter considers the relationship between private practice and the public good through the lens of an under-examined organizational form: the "private public interest law firm." This form of practice attempts to marry profit and principle in organiz
Anthony Paik, John P. Heinz,
37 Law
Sociology Of Law | Computational Legal Studies
The Computational Legal Studies Blog is an attempt to disseminate legal or law related studies that employ a computational or complex systems component. We hope this venue will serve as a coordinating device for those interested in using such techniques
Crooked Timber > Popularity of Facebook and MySpace changes, but SES differences in use persist
pajek [Pajek Wiki]
Pajek (Slovene word for Spider) is a program, for Windows, for analysis and visualization of large networks. It is freely available, for noncommercial use, at its download page. See also a reference manual for Pajek (in PDF). The development of Pajek is t
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