Introduction; Part I: Surveying Empirical Literature; 1: Martin Innes: Policing; 2: Wesley Skogan: Crime and Criminals; 3: Jacqueline Hodgson and Andrew Roberts: Criminal Process and Prosecution; 4: Antony Bottoms and Andrew von Hirsch: The Crime-Preventive Impact of Penal Sanctions; 5: Sally Wheeler: Contracts and Corporations; 6: Julia Black: Financial Markets; 7: Steve Meili: Consumer Protection; 8: Elizabeth Warren and Robert Lawless: Bankruptcy and Insolvency; 9: Linda Haller: Regulating the Professions; 10: Paul Fenn and Neil Rickman: Personal Injury Litigation; 11: Herbert Kritzer: Claiming Behaviour as Legal Mobilization; 12: Mavis Maclean: Families; 13: Simon Deakin: Labour and Employment Laws; 14: David Cowan: Housing and Property; 15: Linda Camp-Keith: Human Rights Instruments; 16: David Law: Constitutions; 17: Michael Adler: Social Security and Social Welfare; 18: Bridget Hutter: Occupational Safety and Health; 19: Cary Coglianese and Catherine Courcy: The Environment; 20: Simon Halliday and Colin Scott: Administrative Justice; 21: Roderick Macdonald: Access to Civil Justice; 22: Peter Russell: Judicial Recruitment, Training, and Careers; 23: Sharyn Roach Anleu and Kathy Mack: Trial Courts and Adjudication; 24: David Robertson: Appellate Courts; 25: Carrie Menkel-Meadow: Alternative Dispute Resolution; 26: Neil Vidmar: Lay Decision-Makers in the Legal Process; 27: Gary Edmond and David Hamer: Evidence Law; 28: Carrie Menkel-Meadow and Bryant Garth: Civil Procedure and Courts; 29: Chrisopher Hodges: Collective Actions; 30: Catalina Smulovitz: Law and Courts on Development and Democratization; 31: Gregory Shaffer and Tom Ginsburg: How Does International Law Work?; 32: Richard Moorhead: Lawyers and Other Legal Service Providers; 33: Margaret Davies: Legal Pluralism; 34: James Gibson: Public Images and Understandings of Court; 35: Fiona Cownie: Legal Education and the Legal Academy; Part II: Doing and Using Empirical Legal Research; 36: Herbert Kritzer: The (Nearly) Forgotten Early Empirical Legal Research; 37: Lee Epstein and Andrew D. Martin: Quantitative Approaches to Empirical Legal Research; 38: Lisa Webley: Qualitative Approaches to Empirical Legal Research; 39: Laura Beth Nielsen: The Need for Multi-Method Approaches in Empirical Legal Research; 40: Denis Galligan: Legal Theory and Empirical Research; 41: Martin Partington: Empirical Legal Research and Policymaking; 42: Antony Bradney: The Place of Empirical Legal Research in the Law School Curriculum; 43: Christine Harrington and Sally Merry: Empirical Legal Training in the US Academy

Peter Cane is Professor of Law and Director of the John Fleming Centre Advancement of Legal Research, College of Law, Australian National University. He is the author of the Clarendon Law Series title Administrative Law (OUP 4th edition 2004); Principles of Administrative Law (co-authored with Leighton McDonald, OUP, 2008); Responsibility in Law and Morality (Hart, 2003); and is the co-editor of several volumes, including The New Oxford Companion to Law (co-edited by Joanne Conaghan, OUP, 2008).

Herbert Kritzer is the Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School. He is Professor of Political Science and Law emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published numerous articles and several books, including Risks, Reputations, and Rewards (Stanford UP: 2004) and is the co-editor, with Susan Silbey, of In Litigation: Do the 'Haves' Still Come Out Ahead? (Stanford UP: 2003).

The empirical study of law, legal systems and legal institutions is widely viewed as one of the most exciting and important intellectual developments in the modern history of legal research. Motivated by a conviction that legal phenomena can and should be understood not only in normative terms but also as social practices of political, economic and ethical significance, empirical legal researchers have used quantitative and qualitative methods to illuminate many aspects of law's meaning, operation and impact.
In the 43 chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research leading scholars provide accessible and original discussions of the history, aims and methods of empirical research about law, as well as its achievements and potential. The Handbook has three parts. The first deals with the development and institutional context of empirical legal research. The second - and largest - part consists of critical accounts of empirical research on many aspects of the legal world - on criminal law, civil law, public law, regulatory law and international law; on lawyers, judicial institutions, legal procedures and evidence; and on legal pluralism and the public understanding of law. The third part introduces readers to the methods of empirical research, and its place in the law school curriculum.