Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
The findings of replication studies conducted in the early 2010s led many to declare that science was in the midst of a ‘replication crisis’. Since then, a growing number of reforms have been proposed and tested. The field of empirical legal studies seems behind other fields such as psychology, economics, political science, medicine, biology, and others that have taken significant steps toward uncovering the general reliability of the field’s empirical work, investigating the causes of observed unreliability, and instituting and testing the effects of various reforms.

The purpose of this Article is to summarize what we know about the reliability of empirical legal studies and to highlight what, exactly, would be useful to learn. Part I summarizes, in broadbrush terms, what we know about the reliability of empirical research in fields other than empirical legal studies. Many fields are thought to be plagued by replication crises characterized by low rates of successful replication of randomly drawn samples of studies. These findings have set off alarm bells. They have also led researchers to explore what causes replication failures. Some of the causes are individual researcher-based while others are grounded in the scientific ecosystem. Part I also describes approaches used across fields to increase reliability and what we’ve learned about the efficacy of those approaches.

Part II summarizes what we know about the general reliability of empirical legal studies. While the body of metaresearch focusing on the field is growing, it is relatively new. Overall, we know very little about the general reliability of ELS.

Part III sets out a metaresearch agenda for the field. It outlines several important metaresearch questions about ELS that we do not yet have answers to but should.

Kathryn Zeiler, What We Should Know About the Reliability of Empirical Legal Studies, 75 DePaul Law Review (2026).