We also looked at it briefly in a broader study of datalink (at the ATMDC in Bournemouth). It was done for a Master's Thesis at Cranfield University.
The study wasn't concerned with the elimination of the party line, but it asked what the impact of losing it would be. I think without exception both pilots and controllers felt that it would be detrimental to safety. Our recommendation (echoed in the EOLIA project - European Pre-Operational Datalink Applications) was that only the 'housekeeping' comms be exclusively datalinked (i.e. no speech), leaving comms that contributed to situation awareness for all to hear.