Law and courts scholars come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds (e.g., criminology, political science, sociology) and are frequently unaware of relevant knowledge or research in disciplines outside their own. This impedes a broader understanding of phenomenon of interest to law and courts scholars and fosters the generation of empirical datasets that should have broad appeal but that are under-utilized. This proposed workshop is intended to contribute to the remediation of this situation. The proposed workshop will consist of panels organized around three objectives. The first panel will focus on the identification of extant datasets and how such datasets can be profitably used to advance multi-disciplinary research related to law and courts. The second panel will focus on the integration of empirical data to address research questions of interest to law and courts scholars, particularly questions that can advance theoretical understanding. The third panel will focus on data intended to measure key concepts (e.g., ideology of judges). It will bring together senior scholars, junior scholars, and graduate students to foster exchange and dialogue over the best way to leverage existing datasets, as well as to identify new datasets that should be developed.
