39 papers selected from 118 submissions · 13 scientific sessions · 5 special sessions
The Call for Papers for CELS Global Brazil 2026 is closed. The scientific committee has completed its review, the selected papers have been notified, and the program is now finalized. Indeed, the full program will be published in the days leading up to the conference, on the schedule page and the parallel sessions page.
Questions about an accepted paper, a withdrawn submission, or program logistics are welcome at info@celsbrazil.org.br. For the next edition's Call for Papers, watch the news page later in the year.
Closed — the submission portal is no longer accepting papers.
Headline figures from the CELS Global Brazil 2026 Call for Papers.
The accepted papers cover a wide range of jurisdictions, methods, and substantive topics within empirical legal studies.
The selected papers come from authors based in Brazil and from several other jurisdictions across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Indeed, the conference has long aimed to convene Latin American empirical legal scholarship in dialogue with the international community, and this edition continues that tradition.
The Brazilian contingent itself spans more than one region, with authors from leading public and private universities. The international contingent brings together established scholars and early-career researchers, with a mix of common-law, civil-law, and mixed-tradition jurisdictions represented.
Submissions adopt a broad set of empirical approaches, in line with the CELS tradition. The program includes papers that draw on:
The 13 scientific sessions, distributed across four parallel slots (S1 through S4), cover the standing concerns of the field together with a number of topics that have grown in prominence over recent editions. Recurrent areas include:
Courts & judicial behavior Constitutional political economy Criminal justice AI & law Digital regulation Gender & discrimination Corporate & financial law Health law & policy Antitrust Comparative & international Empirical methods
The selected papers span the full career range that the CELS community has come to expect, from doctoral candidates presenting first empirical work through mid-career and senior scholars with established research agendas.
As a consequence, every session is designed to combine voices at different stages of the academic career, with chairs and discussants assigned to give substantive engagement to each paper. The financial-aid program supports travel costs for a number of presenters from Brazil and from the broader Latin American region.
Besides the 13 parallel scientific sessions, the program includes five thematic Special Sessions organized in partnership with allied research networks.
How the 39 selected papers were chosen.
Each submission was reviewed against the standing CELS criteria: an original empirical contribution, methodologically sound design, and substantive engagement with the literature. Reviews considered the strength of the identification or measurement strategy, the clarity of the research question, and the relevance of the findings to the broader empirical legal studies community.
The international scientific committee, which includes scholars based in Brazil, the United States, Europe, and across Latin America, completed the review in two rounds. The first round produced an initial pool of strongly recommended and recommended papers; the second consolidated that pool into the final program, with attention to thematic coherence within sessions and to the overall composition of the conference.
Indeed, the CELS Global Brazil 2026 program builds on the methodological standards established by the SELS community over more than two decades, and on the substantive sensibility of the Brazilian Research Network on Law and Public Policy, the network behind the parallel VI CBDPP. The two traditions have entered into deliberate conversation in this edition, and the program reflects that conversation.
The full scientific committee is acknowledged on the conference homepage.
If you submitted a paper, attended a previous edition, or are planning to come to São Paulo in June.
Beyond CELS Global Brazil 2026, the empirical legal studies calendar continues with confirmed workshops in São Paulo and Chicago and the annual SELS conference at Northwestern. A new edition by the Instituto CELS Latinoamérica is also under preparation.
For participants who want to stay engaged with the broader empirical legal studies community after the São Paulo conference, three confirmed events follow in 2026. A new edition is in preparation for 2028.