Twenty years of empirical legal studies · the Global series in Latin America
An interdisciplinary scientific community for empirical research on law and legal institutions.
The Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) was launched in 2006 in response to the growing level of empirical scholarship in law schools and adjacent disciplines. The founding organisers were Bernard Black (then at Texas, now Northwestern), Jennifer Arlen and Geoffrey Miller (NYU), Ted Eisenberg (Cornell, until his death in 2014), and Michael Heise (Cornell). The first conference was held at the University of Texas at Austin, with subsequent editions rotating through the principal centres of empirical legal scholarship in the United States.
The conference operates as the principal meeting of the empirical legal studies community. Indeed, it brought together for the first time scholars who had been working in adjacent silos in law schools, economics departments, political science programs, and elsewhere. The Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS) grew out of the conference series, and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies followed shortly after, completing the institutional infrastructure of the field.
The annual conference has rotated through the leading empirical legal studies centres in the United States, culminating in its twentieth edition at Northwestern in October 2026.
The international face of CELS, launched in 2015 and arriving in Latin America in 2024.
Starting in 2015, the CELS community launched a complementary Global series, with editions held outside the United States to foster the international growth of empirical legal research. The Global editions have been hosted across Europe and Asia, and from 2024 in Latin America.
The dual structure reflects two parallel commitments of the scientific society. The first is the consolidation of the empirical legal studies community as an institutional whole, anchored in the annual US conference, the Society, and the Journal. The second is the effective internationalisation of empirical legal research, in the recognition that the field has matured well beyond its original American context and now operates as a global enterprise. The Global series is the practical expression of that second commitment.
The first international edition of CELS in Brazil and Latin America.
The first edition of CELS in Brazil and Latin America took place from June 5 to 7, 2024, at Espaço Maestro near Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, with sessions also held at the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo, Insper, and Unifesp. The conference was organised by CEOE/Unifesp in partnership with the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.
Forty-six papers were selected from over one hundred original submissions through a rigorous double-blind review process. Twenty-three of the forty-six papers were authored by Brazilian researchers, signalling the maturity of the empirical tradition in Brazilian legal scholarship. The full programme committee, working with the selection committee and the executive committee, prepared a custom list of discussants for each paper, applying the CELS tradition of substantive commentary to the largest gathering of empirical legal researchers ever held in Brazil.
The 2024 keynote line-up featured Bernard S. Black (Northwestern), Michael Heise (Cornell), Richard R. W. Brooks (NYU), and Maria Paula Dallari Bucci (USP, founder of the Brazilian Research Network on Law and Public Policy). The combination of CELS founders and the local empirical community set the tone for the editions that followed.
Two papers presented in 2024 drew particular press attention. The first, by Claudio Ferraz (UBC Vancouver) and Laura Schiavon (UFJF), examined the impact of the Maria da Penha Law on domestic violence and showed an eleven percent reduction in household homicides following the law. The second, by Karina Bugarin (USP) and Fabiana Rocha (USP), analysed Brazilian public-policy responses to climate change. Both pointed to the depth of empirical work now being produced in the country.
A selection of media items from the first Brazilian edition.
The 2024 edition received broad press attention in Brazil and abroad. The most consequential opinion piece was Conference Chair Ivan César Ribeiro's article in JOTA, "O novo patamar da pesquisa empírica em Direito no Brasil", published on the eve of the conference. It framed the event as a marker of the growing internationalisation of Brazilian legal research and a turning point for the institutional consolidation of empirical scholarship in the country. National outlets ran complementary coverage of the scientific content.
The second Brazilian edition consolidates the joint structure inaugurated in 2024, broadening the scope to law and public policy.
The 2026 edition consolidates the structure inaugurated in 2024. It is held jointly with the VI Brazilian Conference on Law and Public Policy (CBDPP), broadening the scope to include both empirical legal studies and law and public policy work. The conference takes place at the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo (Largo de São Francisco) and at Insper, with thirty-nine accepted CELS papers organised into thirteen scientific sessions and five special sessions, plus the parallel CBDPP track of fifteen sessions in the same format.
The 2026 keynote line-up brings John J. Donohue III (Stanford), Lee Epstein (Washington University in St. Louis), Adam Chilton (Dean, University of Chicago Law School, with "Why Constitutions Fail" co-authored with Mila Versteeg), and Fabiana Rocha (FEA/USP). The opening ceremony features Minister Luiz Edson Fachin of the Brazilian Supreme Court.
Looking further ahead, the calendar of empirical legal studies events continues with the WCLR workshop in São Paulo on June 11, the WCLR workshop in Chicago on September 30, and the twentieth annual CELS at Northwestern on October 2–3, 2026. A new edition by the Instituto CELS Latinoamérica is under preparation for 2028.