Toulouse University will soon host a two day conference on empirical legal studies with a particular focus on environmental law. It will bring together scholars from across Europe, including ELS pioneers such as Arthur Dyevre and Mathias Siems. Of twenty speakers overall, two currently work in German academia: Moritz Reese (presenting on “Lessons learned from an implementation study about the water directive”) and Konstantin Chatziathanasiou (presenting on “Empirical constitutional law scholarship across Europe”). Here’s from the conference website:
Empirical legal research is defined as the systematic collection and analysis of data on legal phenomena. These data are a set of legal information or information about the law and, more broadly, about its functioning in society. It is collected systematically, even exhaustively, and then analysed to answer a research question and produce knowledge about the law and how it actually works.
While North American legal scholarship underwent an empirical turn in the mid-2000s and a real field of research has developed, the development of these approaches in Europe is much more scattered and uneven depending on the country and the legal discipline. However, there are several indications that this field is in its infancy at the European level.
The objective of this conference is to produce a state of knowledge on the development of empirical legal research at the European level. First, it will trace the first elements of the development of these methods, highlight the main trends and elucidate the possible theoretical foundations. The conference will then map the use of empirical methods in the different legal disciplines across Europe before deepening this analysis in the field of environmental law.
A five page pdf booklet containing the programme and practical information is available from Toulouse Capitol University. It does not state a deadline for registration, but merely asks to register with Sylvie.Trentin@ut-capitole.fr. The registration fee is 100 €, except for students, Phd candidates & Toulouse university staff.
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