[International Conference] Empirical Legal Research: a state of knowledge across Europe

from June 9, 2023 to June 10, 2023

Manufacture des Tabacs
Auditorium MS001

On June 9 and 10, a conference dedicated to empirical legal research will be held. In addition to general presentations on the development of this method in Europe, specialists from many legal disciplines, both private and public, will present the empirical work being carried out in their disciplines. The conference will take place in Auditorium MS 001.

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.