Who needs the European Society for Empirical Legal Studies?

Abstract

The European Society for Empirical Legal Studies (ESELS) was established on 1 September 2022, in Amsterdam. Its goal is to promote a constructive conversation among legal scholars involved in empirical legal research (in the broadest sense), primarily relevant to Europe and European jurisdictions, and organize an annual conference. The first conference was held on the same date. The call for papers invited scholars to submit their work using qualitative and/or quantitative methods about the assumptions, the functioning, and the impact of the law. The aim of the conference was to create a unique place for empirical legal scholars to engage, present, and discuss their results. For full disclosure, I delivered one of the plenary addresses and I am one of the founding members. In this short editorial, I reflect on ESELS’s commitment to foster a methodologically pluralist, intellectually open, and disciplinary inclusive academic culture, and, in connection with that, wonder about the character of European empirical legal research. The former gives legal scholars a unique opportunity to reinvigorate their discipline under one label. The latter intrigues me, particularly on the question of whether ESELS can develop a healthy relationship with its mother discipline – the doctrinal legal research, and whether it will promote or frustrate the fledgling and ongoing conversations between law and economics, law and political science, and so on. These relationships, I sense, might be the key determinants of ESELS’s institutional and scientific success. The topic(s) (re-)occur to me at the time when ESELS’s contemporary, the extremely successful Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS), is holding its 16 Annual Conference at the