Conference Report Toulouse 2025

The law of the future

ESELS Conference Report Toulouse 2025

On 19-20 June 2025 the Annual ESELS Conference took place in the brand new Rempart Building of the Toulouse Capitole University. Under the ideal conditions of a streamlined conference organization, with the invaluable help of dedicated local staff members and volunteers, and perfect Southern French summer weather 180 scholars and students actively interested and engaged in Empirical Legal Studies from all over Europe and beyond convened in the lively city center of Toulouse, France.

On the Wednesday before (18-6), after inspiring and interactive pre-conference ELS workshops in the afternoon with over 40 participants in total, the Conference was officially opened in the wonderful surroundings of the Faculties Garden by ESELS President Urška Šadl, Local Organizer Julien Bétaille, Dean of the Toulouse School of Law Matthieu Poumarède and Chief Librarian of the Toulouse Capitole University Marcel Marty, touring his fascinated ELS audience through the rich history of the university.

Day 1

At the start of the first day President Urška Šadl took a moment to thank and honour Founding Member and Past President Catrien Bijleveld for her invaluable contributions to the European Society. After the kick-off, Véronique Champeil-Desplats delivered the first keynote of the conference, in which she provided unique epistemological insights into the historical development of legal empiricism in France.

At the end of the morning the first of the in total thirty parallel sessions of the Toulouse conference took place – ranging from quantitative case-studies on judicial independence in Europe to environmental rights and justice, and from firm behaviour to criminal sentencing. All panel sessions during the conference were marked by a wide variety of different ELS topics and a plurality of methodological approaches to the law and legal data.

Later in the afternoon 6 poster presenters showcased their empirical-legal work on a variety of topics – from equal treatment in Hungary to EU tax havens, and from hate crime in Poland to the systematic analysis of employer and employee responsibilities for preventing psychosocial workload in the Netherlands. All poster presentations were judged by an expert jury for the ESELS 2025 Poster Recognition later on the day.

At the end of a long first day it was an honour for ESELS to have Jean Tirole, Honorary Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics 2014 Nobel Prize of Economics, providing a more than fascinating lecture on the Empirical Turn and the Credibility Revolution, with lessons from economics over the past decades – after an inspiring introduction by Hugues Kenfack, President of the Toulouse Capitole University.

Day 1 ended under the Toulouse sunset at the bank of the Garonne River, where the conference dinner took place at the charming Turbine Restaurant. Here, Future President Or Brook announced that Tabea Krauss (Erasmus University Rotterdam) deserved the ESELS 2025 Poster Recognition for her study on Consumer Responses to Carbon-Neutral Product Labels – with an honourable mention for the poster presenters on dynamic hypergraphs from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

Also, EJELS editor-in-chief Johan Lindholm made his voice heard for announcing that Tobias Traxler (National University of Singapore) won the ESELS 2025 Early Career Recognition, for his work on Counsel, Experts, and Damages Valuation in Investment Arbitration.

Day 2

The last day of the conference commenced with more engaging panel sessions, on systematic studies of case-law, quantitative approaches to armed conflicts, AI adjudication and governance, and many more ELS topics.

During the plenary session at the end of the morning President Urška Šadl introduced the third and last keynote speaker, Katerina Linos from UC Berkeley School of Law, who delivered an intriguing plenary address on competition law and digital regulations from European design to global implementation, filled with various empirical highlights – and followed by an interactive discussion with her audience. The session was ended with the ESELS group photo.

On day 2 also the ESELS General Assembly took place: here, the attending members of the Society elected Or Brook as Future President as well as Katarzyna Metelska-Szaniawska and Gareth Davies as new ESELS board members. The General Assembly also provided Future Organizer Mitja Kovac (Ljubljana, 18-19 June 2026) the platform to showcase – with the help of some beautiful slides – the many different reasons to come to the Annual Conference in Ljubljana next year.

The closing ceremony was chaired by Past President Urška Šadl, delivering thankful words to the outstanding local organization (Julien Bétaille, Matthieu Gaye-Palettes and Gavin Marfaing) for making this event possible. This was also the moment for organizer Julien Bétaille to hand over the ESELS flag to Rok Spruk, temporarily replacing Mitja Kovac on behalf of the Ljubljana local organizing committee.

Finally, President Tilmann Altwicker expressed his confidence in the upcoming year, and emphasized the important role of the Society in the development and growth of empirical-legal studies in Europe.

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