Article by David V. Snyder
The opportune scholarly moment has arrived for empirical scholarship in contract law. Exhortations to do empirical work have long resounded through the academy, at least since the time of the Legal Realists, but as is often observed, the Realists accomplished little of the kind of empirical work that they had in mind, or of the kind we mean when we speak of empiricism (a definitional point that will be taken up shortly). Not until the pioneering work of Professor Stewart Macaulay, as well as Professor Lawrence Friedman and others of the Wisconsin School, did empirical work get off the ground in an important way, at least as far as contracts are concerned. And aside from the work of the Wisconsin School, the law reviews for many years continued their long record of purity, largely unsullied by empiricism. In recent years, though, the pages have gained texture from empirical work, and there is now certainly enough of it to warrant a gathering devoted to empirical scholarship in contract law.
My role in this symposium, as well as the role of these introductory reflections, is adventurous. I am no empiricist. Yet nearly all scholars of contract law are inevitably interested in empirical work on the subject, and nearly all of us are consumers of empirical scholarship. We read it and are informed by it. Our views are shaped by it. Our classes and writings reflect it. With more careful study and closer thought, however, we may find that we are less reliably informed than we think, and we are correspondingly in greater need of more work done with greater rigor. The reflections that follow are those of a consumer of empiricism, and they are directed at fellow consumers as well as those who offer empirical work. These ruminations are centered on three points: what we mean by empiricism, how we may be misled by failures to adhere to established rules of inference, and why we must be wary of pinning too much on scientific appearances.
About the Author
David V. Snyder. Professor of Law, Tulane University School of Law; Chair, Section on Contracts, Association of American Law Schools (2005-2006).
Citation
80 Tul. L. Rev. 1009 (2006)