Some coordinators monitor very strictly the boundary between scientific and professional publications, they tend to consider articles as scientific if they agree with a certain vision of jurisprudence, i.e. empirical research, conceptually robust and primarily relevant to an international academic audience. However, there are various other strategies for using indicators associated with very different intellectual views. For example, one of our informants pursues an alternative vision of a “scientific turning point” that actually depends on the participation of a non-academic audience at the national level.61 What law as a discipline should perhaps avoid is that jurisprudence and legal practice drift away in a way that renders academic research useless for practitioners and legal practice uninteresting for researchers – this is a point of criticism for scholars. United States for years. 67 This probably implies that we should appreciate the diversity of the landscape of academic legal research, as different types of legal research (doctrinaire, empirical, comparative) perform different functions and therefore sometimes need to be evaluated according to different standards (e.g. Methodological rigor in doctrinal publications means something different from in empirical legal publications, where, for example, reproducibility is an important requirement). The development of tailor-made research evaluation methods for different types of research cannot be done without the expertise and involvement of the academic legal community. In social law research, law is considered one of the instruments of social policy.
Effective legal research is hardly possible without a good understanding of the research methodology. A researcher must justify important methodological decisions in his or her work. When interpreting the results, two limitations of the chosen methodology must be taken into account. First, only law professors who were working in a law school at the time of the survey participated in the survey. Of course, the views of young lawyers and law professors from other faculties on research evaluation would also be interesting. Second, responses in a survey always depend on the procedure chosen. Since the survey was intended to examine the opinions and assessments of lawyers, their responses may also include certain views that respondents consider socially desirable. However, we tested the Swiss sample for language, academic affiliation, age, gender, research field and type of research. We found no significant differences between the categories.28 Finally, we will compare the main results of the Swiss and Dutch exploratory surveys in order to draw the main lessons learned. On this basis, we will make some proposals for further research. It is worth remembering that we cannot compare the results with previous studies on this point, because the Swiss and Dutch surveys were the first to be conducted by lawyers from both countries.
On the one hand, it limits the possibilities for generalization. On the other hand, it provides unique data that future researchers can rely on. The researcher must properly explain why he or she uses a particular method to evaluate the results of the research by himself or by others. The adoption of a particular methodology should flow from the objective and purpose of the research. Table 6 shows how academics and non-lawyers assess indicators that could give an indication of the quality of the content of legal publications. Interestingly, both groups place the presence of a clear research question at the top of the list, while how the use of sources is considered less important. The reason may be that legal scholars may believe that the evidence presented in the footnotes to articles and books needs no further explanation. This was, at least until recently, common in the Netherlands. It would be difficult to find books that explain the choice of sources. However, the importance of the availability of a robust research question has been much more widely debated in the literature over the past decade.
In the case of theses, for example, this became an issue after Tijssen`s research on thesis quality.50 The Legal Aid Branch identified an initial list of potential respondents. All individuals on the list received initial communication from management explaining the purpose of the evaluation and inviting them to an interview. Interviews were conducted by telephone in the respondents` preferred official language. However, we have argued that much of the dominant jurisprudence (or “doctrinal science”) deals with hermeneutical studies, that is, the interpretation of the communication. In particular, we argued that lawyers are typically engaged in the following activities: Scientific preferences for research evaluation methods. A sociological approach to law is one of the most characteristic features of modern jurisprudence – the social law approach considers law as a means of control and social change. Interestingly, legal scholars in both countries seem to focus more on the quality of interpretation and reasoning in jurisprudence than on methodological rigour, correct use of sources, and accountability – although a link between the two types of indicators may be suspected. After all, how do you know that reasoning in legal publications is valid in cases where authors do not make their implicit methodological decisions explicit? Ashley, K.D.: Legal argument modeling: reasoning with cases and assumptions. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, USA (1988) With the growth of international and regional legal systems, understanding the forms and methods of comparative law has become essential for anyone who wants to understand and participate in current legal debates. Although there are differences between the Swiss and Dutch academic legal research cultures, the two strands seem to have a lot in common. Compared to the United States, where law and research have become dominant, particularly in elite law schools, some lawyers argue that legal research has moved too far from legal practice;33 In Switzerland and the Netherlands, academia and practice are still closely linked.
According to the social law approach, the analysis of law is directly linked to the analysis of the social situation to which the law applies and must be placed in the perspective of this situation. In addition, the “scientific” character of case law has also been discussed in Switzerland and the Netherlands.34 There seems to be a consensus that academic research should be more independent and situated at a higher level of (theoretical) abstraction than research that conducts practice. However, when it comes to individual research activities (e.g., expert opinion) and publications (e.g., case notes or comments), the distinction between scientific and professional publications in both countries is blurred. This is not only due to the fact that there are hardly any purely legal journals and legal publishers in Switzerland and the Netherlands, but also to the fact that there is no strict separation between the forums of lawyers and legal practitioners. For example, judges regularly cite academic legal publications and attend academic conferences, while academics cite court cases, comment on legal opinions, and often serve as part-time judges or part-time lawyers. In your work, you may choose to analyze a new judgment or standard in the broader context of the legal system. We have already proposed an argumentative strategy styled above when discussing the “generic” article of law, and we have briefly summarized it here. We assume that you will choose a new CJEU ruling as the subject of your research.
The two elements of “law and economics” as such have nothing to do with each other: the first concerns the study of law and legal processes from a non-legal research perspective, using quantitative methods, for example. The second, on the other hand, is to postulate a particular value or viewpoint that is intended to guide the interpretation of the law. However, “law and economics” does not really distinguish between the two, which has ideologically problematic consequences: while it is certainly legitimate and interesting to explore law on the basis of “economic” methods, this in itself does not justify why a particular ideological vision is chosen as the “correct” economic vision that should shape the interpretation of law. 24At least the scientists who conducted the investigation did not. Recently, experts from the Leiden Center for Science & Technology Studies (CWTS) conducted interviews on evaluation practices in Dutch law schools.