Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (JELS) is a quarterly, peer-refereed interdisciplinary law journal co-published by Wiley-Blackwell and Cornell Law School, serving as the official publication of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS). It publishes empirical scholarship applying statistical, experimental, and observational methodologies to legal systems, corporate governance, and public policy, indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index with a Journal Impact Factor of approximately 1.1.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 7 Nov 2026

What the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies Is

Established in 2004, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (JELS) bridges legal theory and empirical social science methodology. Unlike conventional American student-edited law reviews, JELS utilizes a formal peer-refereed model. Editorial leadership is anchored at Cornell Law School (Myron Taylor Hall, Ithaca, NY), in close partnership with the international Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS). Researchers exploring what legal studies entails often distinguish between doctrinal analysis and empirical legal research; JELS operates as the flagship international venue for the latter.

The journal accepts both experimental and non-experimental studies, drawing research from economics, sociology, political science, and psychology. Understanding these interdisciplinary expectations is critical for scholars navigating law review authorship norms, where collaborative empirical projects require transparent author contribution and statistical reporting.

Citation Metrics and Impact Factor Context

JELS is indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) within the Law subject category (Print ISSN: 1740-1453, Online ISSN: 1740-1461). Under Clarivate’s Journal Citation Reports (JCR), the journal carries a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of approximately 1.1 to 1.3 (with recent releases reporting 1.1). The Journal Impact Factor measures the ratio of citations received in a given data year to citable items (articles and reviews) published by the journal during the preceding two calendar years, divided by the total number of citable items published in that two-year window.

Because JELS publishes four issues per year, annual citable item counts remain relatively compact compared to mega-journals, making citation metrics sensitive to single highly cited methodological papers.

Responsible Assessment and Journal-Level Metrics

In accordance with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and CoARA principles, journal-level metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor should not serve as a proxy for the quality, methodological soundness, or impact of any individual empirical article. In legal academia, citation patterns differ markedly from STEM disciplines: many elite legal scholarship venues are university law reviews not tracked by Clarivate JCR or evaluated primarily through specialized indexes such as the Washington and Lee Law Journal Rankings.

Researchers frequently share preprints and replication working papers on preprint servers—as examined when comparing arXiv versus SSRN—prior to peer review in JELS, which expands readership beyond subscription paywalls.

Data Availability and Replication Standards

Empirical legal scholarship requires rigorous computational reproducibility. JELS manuscripts submitted through the Wiley submission portal must include a formal data availability statement detailing whether datasets, regression code (e.g., in R, Stata, or Python), and supplementary appendices are deposited in persistent public repositories such as Dataverse or open institutional archives.

Sources

Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS). “JELS Overview and Submission Guidelines.” Cornell Law School. Available at: https://community.lawschool.cornell.edu/sels/jels-journal/ (Accessed 2026-11-07).
Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS). “Home and Conference Archive.” Cornell Law School. Available at: https://community.lawschool.cornell.edu/sels/ (Accessed 2026-11-07).
Clarivate Analytics. “Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.” Web of Science Master Journal List & Journal Citation Reports. Print ISSN: 1740-1453; Online ISSN: 1740-1461 (Accessed 2026-11-07).

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