From the Claremont McKenna College website [CJW Note: As I detailed last week, the first annual conference included a fascinating replication of the seminal Eskridge/Baer study of Chevron deference at the Supreme Court.]:

Claremont McKenna College’s Program on Empirical Legal Studies (PELS) is pleased to announce the second annual Empirical Legal Studies Replication Conference to be held on Friday, April 26, 2019, in Claremont, California.

There is a growing awareness of the importance of replication in the empirical social sciences. The creation of data repositories for published articles and the publishing of research protocols prior to estimation are becoming increasingly common (and even expected). Nevertheless, replication studies remain extremely difficult to publish in scholarly journals. To advance and encourage replication studies in empirical legal studies, in 2018 PELS hosted the inaugural replication conference. It was highly successful, and we are now gearing up for the second round. As with the 2018 conference, accepted papers will be published in a special section of the International Review of Law and Economics. An edition of the Review containing papers from last year’s inaugural conference will be published this spring.)

We are currently soliciting proposals that detail a plan to replicate an important study in law and economics/empirical legal studies. We welcome submissions using all methodologies and the conference will include a range of replication methodologies. We are particularly interested in papers that focus on natural language replication of previously hand-coded datasets or replications of randomized control trials. We also encourage proposals from teams consisting of a faculty member and one or more graduate students, in recognition of the fact that replication studies are also an excellent form of pedagogy.

Proposals should be 4-5 pages in length and must include details on how the authors propose to proceed, including a plan for obtaining the data necessary for the replication (e.g., is the data publically available, or has the author of the study to be replicated provided them the data?). We would also welcome (but do not require) additional details on ways the authors might plan to extend the study (e.g., by conducting the original estimation using different time periods, different jurisdictions, or other estimation techniques). Proposed replication studies will be judged on how important the paper is to law and economics/empirical legal studies and the tractability of the proposed replication.

Authors of accepted proposals must commit to attending the conference. PELS will reimburse up to one graduate student and one faculty member for accommodations and up to $500 in travel costs. Please email inquiries and proposals to Eric Helland at ehelland@cmc.edu.

Best regards, and we look forward to seeing your submissions.

Empirical Legal Studies Replication Conference
Program Committee:

Eric Helland, Claremont McKenna College
David Bjerk, Claremont McKenna College
Dawn Chutkow, Cornell Law School
Greg DeAngelo, Claremont Graduate University
James Greiner, Harvard, Law
Michael Heise, Cornell Law School
William Hubbard, U. of Chicago, Law
Emily Owens, UC Irvine
Paige Skiba, Vanderbilt, Law
Eric Talley, Columbia Law School