Panel 2: Roundtable on New Legal Realism

Chair/Discussant:

Gregory Shaffer (University of Minnesota)

Participants:

Hanoch Dagan (Tel Aviv University)
Zev J Eigen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Bryant G. Garth (Southwestern Law School)
Stewart Macaulay (University of Wisconsin)
Victoria Frances Nourse (Emory University/University of Wisconsin)

Abstract:

The term “new legal realism” has appeared over 200 times in the law review literature but has widely divergent meanings to different groups of scholars in different disciplines. To some, it simply means empiricism, to others behavioral economics, to others institutional analysis, and still others reflexive inquiry and qualitative research. Obviously, the “old legal realism” had many branches and the “new” may have as many, too. However, given an explosion of interest in empirical work in the academy, we believe it time to bring together scholars with divergent views about the meaning of new legal realism to engage with each other in a single forum.