Samenvatting

Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) are studies investigating the law in the real world, using empirical methods. Internationally, ELS is on the rise. However, not much is known about what is being done around ELS in the Netherlands. This article describes the results of a systematic review, investigating how many PhD researchers who defended their thesis at a Dutch law faculty in 2015 have collected empirical data, what topic they investigated, which method they used and what background they have. The findings are that 33% of the PhD theses could be labelled as ELS. The majority of ELS were conducted by researchers who have a social science degree. Some of the (only few) lawyers collecting empirical data did not aim to conduct ELS, even though their research questions were very empirical. It is concluded that more empirical education and research funding are needed to stimulate lawyers to conduct more ELS.