Towards a Jurisprudence of Consequences

The central research mission of Groningen Centre for Empirical Legal Research (GELR) is to develop a new and interdisciplinary ‘jurisprudence of consequences’. This refers to a general approach that focuses on the effects of law and legal procedures, both in legal research in and in legal practice. More in particular, GELR research studies the effects of law on:

1. the users of legal procedures;
2. the level of public trust in the justice system;
3. the safeguarding of public interests in private relationships.

Our aim is to generate rich and robust empirical data about law in society, we want to develop better theories to analyse these data and we want use these findings to make a valuable contribution to the lawmaking process and to legal practice.