Conference Dinner Ljubljana
ESELS 2026 Recognitions
ESELS 2026 Paper Recognition
Presenter Tomáš Koref (Goethe University Frankfurt) won the ESELS 2026 Early Career Paper Recognition with How Continental Courts in Central Europe Reason: Case Law Dominates, Text Remains Scarce, and Formalism Declines.
The ESELS Jury found this working paper of outstanding quality in terms of both empirical and legal relevance and a welcome contribution to the scholarly field of Empirical Legal Studies in Europe. Congratulations to Tomáš for winning the ESELS 2026 Paper Recognition.
An honourable mention went to the paper Measuring Incremental Change in Case-Law (Eun Hye Kim, University of Leeds).
ESELS 2026 Poster Recognition
Presenter Sam Chollet (Université de Lausanne) won the ESELS 2026 Early Career Poster Recognition with the poster presentation “Queer Lawfare”: how are LGBTI+ rights litigated in Strasbourg”.
The ESELS Jury unanimously agreed that this poster raised an interesting discussion on third party intervention before the European Court of Human Rights. Congratulations to Sam for being awarded with the ESELS 2026 Poster Recognition.
Honourable mentions went to Platform Republics: how platform rules shape the content of app licences (Luka Nenadic, ETH Zurich) and to Interpreting Statutes in the heart of the Continent (Tomáš Koref, Goethe University Frankfurt)
Annual Conference 18-19 June
Highlights ESELS Ljubljana 2026
On 18-19 June 2026 the 4th Annual ESELS Conference took place in the School of Economics and Business, Ljubljana. More than 120 participants from all over Europe and the world gathered in the heart of the beautiful Slovenian capital city. For 2 days full of discussions on the latest research in the field of Empirical Legal Studies.
Opening day
Wednesday 17 June was filled with highly inspiring and interactive ESELS Pre-Conference Workshops. The workshops were delivered by experts on LLMs, Interviews, Open Science and Causal Inferences. Participants from various countries came together and benefited from the methodological insights shared in the Workshops for their own future research projects.
That evening the Opening Reception took place on a very special and culturally important location: the Philharmonic Hall Ljubljana. After a warm welcome by Conference Organizer Mitja Kovač it was more than an honour to have Nuška Drašček, soloist of the Slovene National Theatre Opera and Ballet Ljubljana. Nuška delivered an outstanding musical performance that the ESELS Community will not forget. It was an unforgettable opening of the ESELS Annual Conference 2026.
Thursday 18 June (Day 1)
The first day, Thursday 18 June, started with Opening addresses by Tomaž Turk, Dean of the School of Economics and Business, ESELS Local Organizer Mitja Kovač, and ESELS President Tilmann Altwicker.
After the opening, it was a great honour for ESELS to have Jonathan Klick delivering the first keynote of the ESELS Conference 2026. Klick’s keynote was entitled “How do we add value after robots take over: empirical scholars in the age of AI” and followed by a lively interaction with the participating ESELS audience.
At the end of the morning, after the first coffee break, the first panel sessions were scheduled: all sessions were marked by a wide variety of different ELS topics and a wide variety of methodological approaches (both qualitative and quantitative) to the law and legal data. Topics included, among others, AI and Legal Reasoning, Empirical Approaches to Constitutions and the Judiciary and Criminal Law and Justice in Europe.
After the networking lunch the panel sessions continued in the afternoon, with topics such as EU Borders and Trade, Empirical Approaches to Judges and Legal Training and Access to Justice in Europe. This was followed by the ESELS 2026 Poster Session in the late afternoon: 7 Presenters pitched their ELS Research Posters within 3 minutes to the ESELS Expert Jury, composed by Ana Lourenco, Marie-José Garot and Kaijus Ervasti. After another round of engaging Panel Presentations it was a pleasure to have ESELS keynote speaker Peter Grajzl presenting on “MLLLMing Legal History”.
The ESELS Conference Dinner on Thursday Evening in Hotel Slon, with over 60 ELS scholars attending. The Conference Dinner was marked by outstanding Slovenian cuisine and musical performance by Maja Bobnar – Majči. After a long day this was also the time and place to announce the winners of the ESELS 2026 Recognitions.
Tomas Koref won the ESELS 2026 Early Career Paper Recognition with the paper “How Continental Courts Reason”. The ESELS 2026 Early Career Poster Recognition was awarded to Sam Chollet with the Poster Queer Lawfare”: how are LGBTI+ rights litigated in Strasbourg. Congratulations to Tomas and Sam!
Friday 19 June (Day 2)
The final day of the ESELS 2026 Conference started off with panel presentations on EU Competition Law, Datasets, Law and Economics, International Courts and Empirical Approaches to the Rule of Law in Europe. At the end of the Friday morning it was a pleasure to have ESELS Past President Urška Šadl moderating the interactive panel discussion. On the topic of “Empirical legal studies, judiciary and legal practitioners: challenges and opportunities” distinguished panelists Heico Kerkmeester, Urška Kežmah, Ana Kerševan, Špela Vizjak engaged in a lively exchange of thoughts on stage.
On Friday also the ESELS 2026 General Assembly took place. Here, the attending members of the Society elected Mathias Siems as ESELS Future President as well as Päivi Leino-Sandberg as new ESELS Board member. Future Organizer Ana Lourenco delivered an inspiring promotional talk on ESELS Porto 2027.
At the end of another long but very rewarding conference day, for some already starting with a yoga session at 6.40, it was time for ESELS President Or Brook to deliver a word of thanks, A big thanks to the outstanding local organization and a word of appreciation to Tilmann Altwicker for successfully serving as our ESELS President over the last year.
In the following Closing Panel “Global Perspectives on the Development of ELS in Europe”, with presenters Jennifer Robbennolt, Luciana Morilas, Keren Weinshall, Ryohei Hisano, ESELS secretary Erik Wesselius and chaired by Or Brook, intra-European and global views on the field of Empirical-Legal Studies in Europe were shared and discussed. One of the main challenges as discussed here was to keep having shared European conversations about the scope of ELS. In particular about what unites us given our wide diversity of methodological approaches and legal fields that is so characteristic of ELS in Europe.
The ESELS 2026 Ljubljana Conference officially ended with organizer Mitja Kovač handing over the ESELS flag to Ana Lourenco, receiving the flag on behalf of the Porto 2027 local organizing committee.
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Toulouse Conference
ESELS Poster Recognition 2025
At the 2025 Conference in Toulouse ESELS provided the stage for poster presentations on empirical-legal research.
The poster session was a great opportunity for presenters to interact with an international audience of empirical-legal scholars about their topic of interest.
Photo: Valéria Kiss (Eötvös Loránd University) presenting her poster to the Jury
ESELS 2025 Poster Recognition
Consumer Responses to Carbon-Neutral Product Labels: Insights from a Field Experiment in the Netherlands and Implications for the Proposed European ‘Green Claims’ Directive (Tabea Krauss, Elena Kantorowicz-Reznichenko – Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Honourable mention
Tracking Legal Change through Dynamic Hypergraphs (Hiroki Matsumoto, Haruka Ezoe, Ryohei Hisano – University of Tokyo)
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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