Publication of ELS Lab @Leiden member Helen Pluut et al in Recht der Werkelijkheid
In the Netherlands, attention to empirical legal research is growing. Growing attention to ELS in legal academia goes hand in hand with attention to education in the field of ELS. To what extent do Dutch law students obtain empirical-legal skills?
In a newly published paper at Recht der Werkelijkheid, Ekaterina Pannebakker, Helen Pluut, Stijn Voskamp and Wouter de Zanger discuss the state of the art. They do so based on an in-depth, country-wide inquiry into courses with an ELS component within the regular curricula of Dutch law schools. Results of this study are discussed per university and per level of education.
The general finding is that at bachelor’s and master’s level, the law schools’ portfolios of ELS education are relatively fragmented without a systematic focus on methodology, while education for PhD candidates includes training in empirical legal research methods at almost all law schools. The article ends by looking ahead to the future, with recommendations for law school curricula as well as points for discussion and questions for future research.