What do Lawyers Have to Count (on)? On the Role of Lawʼs|Empirics in European Legal Studies

Abstract | In Continental Europe, traditional legal thinking is rather remote from empirical research and statistics. Nonetheless lawyers have been trying for more than one hundred years to fuse knowledge about society’s “isʼs and oughts”. Their attempts had to continuously adapt to changes in the dominant intellectual paradigms, and are now framed as discursive argumentation about different normatively infused descriptions of the world. As such, empirical discourse is indispensable for the law and will shape legal education in the future. Complex legal realities require statistical legal thinking. The new academic blog Law’s|Empirics seeks to document and support this development, and provide easily intelligible work-in-progress reports from empirical legal scholars.

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Hanjo Hamann is a professor of private law, business and intellectual property law. He is currently based at EBS University of Business and Law in Wiesbaden, Germany. He is also an editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Language & Law (JLL), and visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
Suggested Citation
Hamann, What do Lawyers Have to Count (on)?, LAW’S|EMPIRICS, 05/01/19, DOI: 10.25527/re.2019.01