Welcome to the Inaugural Judicial Politics Workshop hosted in 2020 at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business.

The advent of large data sets and sophisticated empirical analyses have reopened the scholarly debate on how to improve the traditional models of judicial behavior with a more data-driven approach. Numerous scholars inside and outside of the stream of judicial realism have shown that judicial behavior oftentimes reflects the political ideology and views of the judges. The political ideology of judges has been shown to predict the judicial vote reasonably well. The diffusion of big datasets and advanced quantitative analyses in the field of judicial behavior call for an increased scholarly debate on both the scope, scale, application and feasibility of the data and techniques for improved study of judicial behavior in a critical perspective.

The aim of the workshop is to bring together junior and more experienced scholars of judicial behavior to discuss their ongoing research with a wider audience of scholars, academics and practitioners in law and economics. We are especially delighted to launch an inaugural workshop and aim to organize it annually.

While we wish we could have welcome you in-person to the University of Ljubljana and its vibrant city, the uncertainties around COVID19 epidemic have led us to the decision to move the workshop into the virtual form. We are excited to have this opportunity to a create a new virtual model for law and economics meetings. The new online model provides a unique opportunity to reach a larger audience over the course of the workshop who would not otherwise have been able to travel to Ljubljana. This creates a new opportunity to increase the participation and involvement in the law and economics profession.

We are especially delighted and honored to welcome the keynote speaker Lee Epstein, Ethan A.H. Shepley Distinguished University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis with a polemic talk on the ever-evolving field of judicial behavior.

All sessions are designed around the presentation of the paper followed by an open roundtable discussion. Each session comprises 30 minutes where each speaker is endowed with 20 minutes of the presentation time leaving additional 10 minutes for discussion. All sessions will be made available through a shareable Zoom video link to be released into the program shortly before the conference.

Given the virtual format of the workshop, we have also prepared a small virtual tour of Ljubljana and Slovenia to ensure that the experience of the workshop is at least a little bit similar to the real in-person event with the hope that in subsequent years we will be able to organize the workshop in-person.

We want to thank the speakers, participants and a considerable number of people required to launch the workshop. On behalf of the organizing committee we thank them all for their superb efforts.

We wish all participants and enjoyable meeting with many lively and stimulating interaction with our fellow colleagues.

The Organizing Committee

Sofia Amaral-Garcia, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Lucia Dalla Pellegrina, University of Milano – Bicocca

Nuno Garoupa, George Mason University

Veronica Grembi, University of Milano

Rok Spruk, University of Ljubljana