More Thoughts on Empirical Legal Studies

Mark Graber (Political Science, Maryland) has some wise words of caution about the current enthusiasm for "empirical legal studies."  While there has been a lot of first-rate empirical work done by legal scholars over the past half-century, my own impression (mostly from the appointments process) is that too much of the current work that attaches itself to the banner of "empirical legal studies" substitutes statistical pretense and mountains of data for actual analytical and argumentative content.  That hardly counts against the importance of empirical studies of the legal system, of course, since most work in most genres isn't very good.