Handbook On Legal Methodology

Legal scholarship is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and the study of law has been passed on from generation to generation as an implicit savoir faire. It was presumed that all legal scholars understood the methodology of legal research, making its explicit clarification and justification unnecessary. Over the last decade, the lack of an explicit methodological tradition has become problematic due to the growing interdisciplinary collaboration at universities and the increased importance of external funding, often granted by mixed experts panels. It is therefore time for legal scholarship to make its implicit methodology explicit.This handbook -created on the basis of a PhD project defended at KU Leuven Law Faculty in 2016 - carefully describes the methodology of traditional legal research in four sections: - First, the different types of research objectives that legal scholars can pursue are clarified.- Secondly, as each type of research objective calls for its own methodology, their methodological features are discussed individually.- Thirdly, after looking into each research objective separately, three overall methodological features applicable to all are addressed.- Fourthly, the theory of the previous parts is transformed into a practical methodological guide. This guide serves as a useful instrument for legal scholars who aim to design or reflect on research projects

Drawing on a range of approaches from the social sciences and humanities, this handbook explores theoretical and empirical perspectives that address the articulation of law in society, and the social character of the rule of law. The vast field of socio-legal studies provides multiple lenses through which law can be considered. Rather than seeking to define the field of socio-legal studies, this book takes up the experiences of researchers within the field. First-hand accounts of socio-legal research projects allow the reader to engage with diverse theoretical and methodological approaches within this fluid interdisciplinary area. The book provides a rich resource for those interested in deepening their understanding of the variety of theories and methods available when law is studied in its broadest social context, as well as setting those within the history of the socio-legal movement. The chapters consider multiple disciplinary lenses – including feminism, anthropology and sociology – as well as a variety of methodologies, including: narrative, visual and spatial, psychological, economic and epidemiological approaches. Moreover, these are applied in a range of substantive contexts such as online hate speech, environmental law, biotechnology, research in post-conflict situations, race and LGBT+ lawyers. The handbook brings together younger contributors and some of the best-known names in the socio-legal field. It offers a fresh perspective on the past, present and future of sociolegal studies that will appeal to students and scholars with relevant interests in a range of subjects, including law, sociology and politics. Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This timely Handbook contains a wide-ranging overview of the diverse research methods used within international law. Providing an insightful examination of how international legal knowledge is analysed and adopted, this Handbook offers the reader a deeper understanding on the role and place of research methods in international legal theory, reasoning and practice.

The empirical study of law, legal systems and legal institutions is widely viewed as one of the most exciting and important intellectual developments in the modern history of legal research. Motivated by a conviction that legal phenomena can and should be understood not only in normative terms but also as social practices of political, economic and ethical significance, empirical legal researchers have used quantitative and qualitative methods to illuminate many aspects of law's meaning, operation and impact. In the 43 chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research leading scholars provide accessible and original discussions of the history, aims and methods of empirical research about law, as well as its achievements and potential. The Handbook has three parts. The first deals with the development and institutional context of empirical legal research. The second - and largest - part consists of critical accounts of empirical research on many aspects of the legal world - on criminal law, civil law, public law, regulatory law and international law; on lawyers, judicial institutions, legal procedures and evidence; and on legal pluralism and the public understanding of law. The third part introduces readers to the methods of empirical research, and its place in the law school curriculum.

This book offers readers concise and user-friendly tools to help articulate the most powerful arguments to identify the legislative intent found in the statute. It provides: examples and illustrations from across Canada's federal and provincial jurisdictions; detailed analysis of the key judicial decisions and a table of cases that practitioners in particular will find extremely valuable, as well as a reproduction of both the Interpretation Act (Canada) and Interpretation Act (Quebec).

Until quite recently questions about methodology in legal research have been largely confined to understanding the role of doctrinal research as a scholarly discipline. In turn this has involved asking questions not only about coverage but, fundamentally, questions about the identity of the discipline. Is it (mainly) descriptive, hermeneutical, or normative? Should it also be explanatory? Legal scholarship has been torn between, on the one hand, grasping the expanding reality of law and its context, and, on the other, reducing this complex whole to manageable proportions. The purely internal analysis of a legal system, isolated from any societal context, remains an option, and is still seen in the approach of the French academy, but as law aims at ordering society and influencing human behaviour, this approach is felt by many scholars to be insufficient. Consequently many attempts have been made to conceive legal research differently. Social scientific and comparative approaches have proven fruitful. However, does the introduction of other approaches leave merely a residue of 'legal doctrine', to which pockets of social sciences can be added, or should legal doctrine be merged with the social sciences? What would such a broad interdisciplinary field look like and what would its methods be? This book is an attempt to answer some of these questions.

Consumer law is worthy of greater academic attention at a time when many new questions arise and old ones need new answers. This unique handbook takes the reader on a journey through existing literature, research questions and methods. It builds on the state of the art to offer a springboard for jumping to the heart of contemporary issues and equips researchers with a starter’s kit to weave together rich traditions, ranging from socio-economics to behavioural analysis.