The Role of Theory and Evidence in Media Regulation and Law: Response to Baker and a Defense of Empirical Legal Studies
61 Federal Communications Law Journal 673 (2009)
Daniel E. Ho &
Kevin M. Quinn
Abstract
We thank Professor Baker for a stimulating response to an article in
which we offered empirical evidence of editorial viewpoint diversity
in the face of media consolidation. We appreciate his praise of the
article as "apply[ing] innovative statistical techniques" and as "far
superior methodologically to most empirical studies" he has seen. At
the same time Baker "denies the policy relevance" to our article
because empirical evidence is "entirely irrelevant" to the field of
media regulation under his preferred normative theory. Baker argues
sweepingly that the legal academy's increased willingness to consider
the perspectives of quantitative empiricists and positive theorists is
"malignant," and that law is best confined to normative theory and
"value-based inquiries" -- to the exclusion of positive investigation.
Because of the provocative nature of the specific critiques of our
article and the general across-the-board indictment of positive
scholarship and empirical legal studies, we respond.