Quantitative Empirical International Legal Scholarship

Wearing my hat of Editor-in-Chief offers occasionally a better vantage point to spot trends compared to the reader of individual issues. One has the pipeline in view as well as the huge number of articles which are submitted and which we are unable to publish. One distinct trend is the increased number of articles submitted making use of quantitative data and analysis. In this issue we publish Dia Anagnostou and Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, ‘Domestic Implementation of European Court of Human Rights Judgments: Legal Infrastructure and Government Effectiveness Matter’, with a Reply by Erik Voeten. In the pipeline are articles by Sergio Puig, ‘Social Capital in the Arbitration Market’ (watch out for this one – it will resonate, I am sure); Cecily Rose and Shashank Kumar, ‘A Study of Lawyers Appearing before the International Court of Justice, 1999-2012’; and Thomas Schultz and Cédric Dupont, ‘Investment Arbitration: Promoting the Rule of Law or Over-Empowering Investors? A Quantitative Empirical Study’. And these are just a few of many more that have been submitted. Time will tell whether this becomes a regular ‘thick’ part of international legal scholarship.