Dennis Khong's Advice for Erwin Chemerinsky: Ph.D. in Scientific Legal Research

Continuing our series of responses from various legal luminaries to the question:  What is the single best idea for reforming legal education you would offer to Erwin Chemerinsky as he builds the law school at UC-Irvine:

Dennis W. K. Khong (Lecturer and PGR (Law) Programme Director, Institute for Law, Economy and Global Governance, School of Law, The University of Manchester):

I would like to see a law school promote scientific methodology in legal research. In Chemerinsky's case, that would mean that he plans towards offering a doctoral programme in scientific legal research in a couple of years' time. His hiring policy will have to reflect this aim, by hiring less faculty who do traditional ("black letter law") legal research and more faculty who have interest and training in scientific methods such as political science, economics, mathematics, and statistics. It is also time to bring law and economics out of the domain of economics and firmly implant it as part of the methodology of legal research, like what happened to political science in the 1970s and later. All law schools have as their main aim the training of lawyers. What will be truly innovative is a law school that trains legal policy makers.

For all the posts in the series, see here.