This event is free and open to the public, but seating may be limited and subject to registration. For special assistance  or for other questions about the event, please contact Ms. Curtrice Scott at curtrice@uchicago.edu.

The symposium will bring together academics specializing in a variety of legal subjects to develop methodologies and best practices to guide legal research. This discussion will first consider whether legal scholarship has sufficiently rigorous standards for academic researchers to support claims about changes in legal doctrine. Given the strong case for the argument that legal scholarship lacks such rigorous standards, Symposium participants will also debate the proper methodological principles that should inform how scholars support arguments about constitutions, statutes, court decisions, and administrative regulations. This debate will aim to incorporate methodological insights from a variety of social sciences and to reach consensus with regard to the best practices for academic legal research, writing, and editing.

Confirmed participants include:

William Baude, University of Chicago Law School,
Adam Chilton, University of Chicago Law School
Anup Malani, University of Chicago Law School
Curtis Bradley, Duke University School of Law
Melissa Carlson, UC Berkeley School of Law
Katerina Linos, UC Berkeley
Frank Easterbrook, University of Chicago Law School
Richard Epstein, University of Chicago Law School
Richard Fallon, Jr., Harvard Law School
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, University of Chicago Law School
Abbe Gluck, Yale Law School
Richard Posner, University of Chicago Law School
Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia School of Law
Barbara Spellman, University of Virginia School of Law
Lawrence Solum, Georgetown University Law Center
Cass Sunstein, Harvard Law School
Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School
Omri Ben-Shahar, University of Chicago Law School,
Florencia Marotta-Wurgler, New York University School of Law

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Organized by: Anup Malani, William Baude, Adam
Chilton, and The University of Chicago Law Review ______________________________________________________

Friday, May 6, 2016

8:30–9:00 a.m.                     Continental Breakfast
9:00–9:05 a.m.                     Welcome: Tom Miles & Manuel Valle

Panel I

9:05–9:45 a.m.
Will Baude, Adam Chilton, & Anup Malani (University of Chicago Law School)
Making Doctrinal Work More Rigorous: Lessons from Systematic Reviews

9:45–10:25 a.m.
Katerina Linos & Melissa Carlson (Berkeley School of Law)
Qualitative Methods for Law Review Writing

10:25–11:05 a.m.
Omri Ben-Shahar (University of Chicago Law School) & Florencia Marotta-Wurgler (NYU School of Law), Searching for the Common Law: An Empirical Approach

11:05–11:20 a.m. -- Break

Panel II

11:20–12:00 p.m.
Abbe Gluck (Yale Law School) 
The CBO Canon (Faint-Hearted Formalism and Why Courts Should Learn About How Congress Actually Works)

12:00–12:40 p.m.
Fred Schauer & Barbara Spellman (University of Virginia School of Law)
Analogy, Expertise, and Experience

12:40–1:20 p.m.
Frank Easterbrook (United States Court of Appeals & University of Chicago Law School)
The Absence of Method in Statutory Interpretation                                            

1:20–2:20 p.m. -- Lunch

Panel III 

2:20–3:00 p.m.
Richard Fallon (Harvard Law School)
Arguing in Good Faith about the Constitution: Ideology, Methodology, and Reflective Equilibrium

3:00–3:40 p.m.
Cass Sunstein & Adrian Vermeule (Harvard Law School)
The Unbearable Rightness of Auer

3:40–4:20 p.m.
Richard Epstein (NYU Law School, Hoover Institution, & Chicago Law School)
Concepts Before Precepts: The Central Place of Doctrine in Legal Scholarship         

Saturday, May 7, 2016

8:30–9:00 a.m -- Continental Breakfast

Panel IV

9:00–9:40 a.m.
Lawrence Solum (Georgetown University Law Center)
Originalist Methodology

9:40–10:20 a.m.
Curtis Bradley (Duke Law School)
Doing Gloss

10:20–10:35 a.m. -- Break

Panel V

10:35–11:15 a.m.
Nick Stephanopolous (University of Chicago Law School)
The Concepts of Law

11:15–11:55 a.m.
Richard Posner (United States Court of Appeals & University of Chicago Law School)
What Judges Need in the Way of Legal Research

2016_law_review_symposium-schedule-final.pdf