Empirical Legal Research: A PrimerCall Number: K85.B67 2020
The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal ResearchCall Number: K235 .O938 2010
Notable Free Legal Data Sites
- National Center for State Courts Data Provides a variety of state court statistics data
- The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth dataset) The Supreme Court Database is the definitive source for researchers, students, journalists, and citizens interested in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Database contains over two hundred pieces of information about each case decided by the Court between the 1791 and 2022 terms. Examples include the identity of the court whose decision the Supreme Court reviewed, the parties to the suit, the legal provisions considered in the case, and the votes of the Justices.
- SCOTUS Blog Stat Pack Tom Goldstein and other members of the team at SCOTUSblog have been compiling and releasing Supreme Court statistics at the end of each term since OT95. Here, you can find links to all previous editions of the statistics.
- Harvard Dataverse: Law The Harvard Dataverse Repository is a free data repository open to all researchers from any discipline, both inside and outside of the Harvard community, where you can share, archive, cite, access, and explore research data. Each individual Dataverse collection is a customizable collection of datasets (or a virtual repository) for organizing, managing, and showcasing datasets
- TRACFed Data Interpreter From the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, use the Data Interpreter to turn information from TRAC's Data Warehouse into reports.
- Data.gov Home of the U.S. Government's Open Data
- Envirofacts (EPA) From the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, provides data on a variety of environmental issues including water, air, hazardous waste and compliance.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer The FBI's Crime Data Explorer (CDE) aims to provide transparency, create easier access, and expand awareness of criminal, and noncriminal, law enforcement data sharing; improve accountability for law enforcement; and provide a foundation to help shape public policy with the result of a safer nation. Use the CDE to discover available data through visualizations, download data in .csv format, and other large data files.
- National Archive of Criminal Justice Data The archive contains data from over 3,100 curated studies or statistical data series. NACJD is home to several large-scale and well known datasets, including the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN)
- Census Bureau Data Learn about America's communities through our data profiles. They cover 100,000+ different geographies: states, counties, places, tribal areas, zip codes, and congressional districts. For each, we cover topics like education, employment, health, and housing
- American National Election Studies Data Center provides detailed information on elections through its own surveys on voting, public opinion, and election participation
- European Union Open Data Portal The official portal for European data
- OECD Data From the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, - find, compare, and share the latest OECD data: charts, maps, tables and related publications
- World Bank Open Data Free and open access to global development data
- United Nations Data (UNdata) UNdata provides a variety of statistical resources compiled by the United Nations (UN) statistical system and other international agencies. The numerous databases or tables collectively known as "datamarts" contain over 60 million data points and cover a wide range of statistical themes including agriculture, crime, communication, development assistance, education, energy, environment, finance, gender, health, labour market, manufacturing, national accounts, population and migration, science and technology, tourism, transport and trade.
- International Monetary Fund (IMF) Data Provides a range of finance related data and statistics
Beyond the Notable - Legal Data Set Guides
- Connecticut College's Open Data Sets & Visualizations guide Connecticut College's list of resources for open data, an overview of popular data visualization tools, and tools to help you create your own data visualizations
- University of Chicago's Empirical Legal Research: Data Sources & Repositories guide A collection of electronically-available data and statistics on a wide variety of legal and law-related topics, including U.S. and global economics, law enforcement and criminal justice, litigation, bankruptcy, finance, and more.
- Temple University's Datasets and Data Repositories guide Temple University Libraries' list of datasets and data repositories in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences
- Yale University's Data Sources for Empirical Legal Research guide Yale University Law Library's list of commonly-used data sets and other resources