ESELS 2026 Conference at UL SEB

School of Economics and Business University of Ljubljana is from 17 until 19 of June 2026 hosting the Annual conference of the European Society for Empirical Legal Studies (ESELS). This year’s annual conference features more than 150 researchers from across the globe that have chosen the ESELS Ljubljana conference to discuss their cutting-edge research. In fact, the listed presenter affiliations span around thirty countries. While presenters from Europe form the core of this year’s conference, the program also includes contributions from scholars based far beyond Europe, including Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, and the United States among others.

The 2026 conference also confirms that empirical legal studies in Europe is no longer confined to a small number of methods or legal fields. Every year, ESELS becomes a place where new datasets are introduced, new methods are discussed, old assumptions are challenged, and legal scholarship is opened to evidence, comparison, and methodological debate. The Ljubljana conference comprises 138 research presentations, including 126 panel presentations across 44 panel sessions, 12 poster presentations, and four pre-conference workshops. These figures illustrate the remarkable growth empirical legal studies has experienced over the past decade in Europe and beyond.

In line with ESELS’ philosophy, the Ljubljana’s conference program reflects a broad and inclusive understanding of empirical legal studies: research that engages a wide range of empirical methods, is solidly grounded in law, and is relevant to European institutional and social contexts. It brings together quantitative, qualitative, computational, experimental, doctrinally informed, and comparative approaches to law. It also demonstrates the growing presence of empirical methods across fields such as constitutional law, EU law, human rights, criminal justice, courts, legal AI, competition law, access to justice, sustainability, and legal institutions more generally. It also features distinguished keynote speakers, Professor Jonathan Klick (University of Pennsylvania, USA), Professor Peter Grajzl (Washington & Lee University, USA, Justice Heico Kerkmeester (Supreme Administrative Court for Trade and Industry, The Netherlands), Dr Urška Kežmah (President of Judicial Council of Slovenia), Dr Ana Kerševan (State Attorney General of the Republic of Slovenia), Špela Vizjak (President of the Slovenian Chamber of Insolvency Practitioners), and Professor Urška Šadl (University of Copenhagen, Denmark). Their participation underlines an important feature of ESELS: empirical legal research is not only an academic enterprise. It also speaks to courts, public institutions, legal professions, policy-makers, law-makers and the future of law in society. More information available at: https://esels.eu/