This panel highlights works-in-progress by junior scholars using experimental methods to investigate core questions in law. Experimental methods have become increasingly important for testing theoretical claims, uncovering implicit assumptions in legal doctrine, and assessing how legal rules are understood by diverse audiences, including judges, jurors, and members of the public. By drawing on experimental methods, scholars in this panel generate empirical evidence that informs normative debates and enriches our understanding of how the law operates in practice. This panel also provides an opportunity for attendees to engage with the methodological innovations of a new generation of scholars whose work is advancing the empirical foundations of jurisprudence.
Participants discuss a recently published book, We the Voters (Stanford University Press), with the author, Lori Ringhand. In this pragmatic, optimistic work, author Ringhand relies on constitutional text and encourages readers to question, debate, and improve our system of self-government. The discussion includes the substance of the book, the importance of sharing our expertise with a broader audience, and the panelists' current projects involving election law and democracy.
Over about the past 100 years, one can trace the criminalization of a host of activities that the Victoria era societies labelled as sin. Often, regulation was aimed at curtailing pleasure, including sexual pleasure, drug and alcohol use, access to exotic (and often serious) literature, and more. _x000D_ For most of the 20th century, public demands and Supreme Court precedent expanded individual liberty interests. But in recent years, the hard turn to the right poses a challenge: which of our freedoms are now at risk?_x000D_
