Presenters: Tomas Gabris, Katarzyna Zak Krzyzankova, Daniel Kroslak
A fundamental problem in the efforts to build up proper legal science is allegedly the absence of distinction between law as an object of scientific research and the legal scholarship itself. Legal scholarship should namely not be considered identical with effective law, and the methods of legal scholarship should, therefore, encompass not only “legal methods” (or rather “standard operations”). A comprehensive and non-reductionist view should take into consideration that legal scholarship studies not only law (researched by the so-called legal dogmatics, being rather a humanities discipline in its nature), but also broader legal phenomena linked to the issues of creation (legislation), implementation (compliance) and application of law, which are often researched by methods other than those of legal dogmatics, namely specifically by empirical methods or by tools and methods of other scholarly disciplines – such as history, philosophy, etc.
Each of these approaches naturally prefers different set of research methods. Closest to the methodology applied by practical lawyers is thereby the scholarship of legal dogmatics, which employs to a great extent the standard operations being used in legal practice itself – namely those of identification of law, formal systematization of law, interpretation of law, legal argumentation, logical syllogism, analogical reasoning or recently also the operations of balancing of principles (resembling a return to bygone methods of legal casuistry). Identification and listing of the methods and/or standard operations of law (and legal dogmatics) can thereby serve as benchmarking tool against which both legal practice and dogmatic legal scholarship can be compared and evaluated.
Despite the importance of the issues presented above, the standard operations of law (legal practice) and the methods of various types of legal scholarship have so far been at most in the focus of attention of individual positive law departments at Law Schools only, while some overarching courses are being offered by departments of legal theory in addition. However, some of the Law Schools offer also specific courses on legal methodology, or methodology of legal scholarship, paying closer attention to their methods and standard operations, accepting the idea that these are being in fact specific normative tools of law and legal scholarship per se.
In order to be able to assess the actual state of the art in the research and teaching on methodology of law and methodology of legal scholarship (in its various shapes), we invite scholars from various jurisdictions and countries to join our special workshop to present the situation in their respective Law Schools. Such a comparative undertaking – introducing the courses and approaches taken towards the methodology of law and legal scholarship in Law Schools across the world, might help us to identify, describe and further analyse the actual contents and distinctions between the fields of legal methodology and methodology of legal scholarship, as well as to identify the specific methods or standard operations employed by lawyers and legal scholars across nations.
We invite scholars to submit abstracts of their paper proposals that address the given topic at the level of their own jurisdiction and their own Law School, in a structure including:
- the courses offered and an overview of current literature on methodology of law and methodology of legal scholarship
- the actual contents and distinctions between the fields of legal methodology and methodology of legal scholarship (if applicable)
- an overview of specific methods or standard operations employed by lawyers and legal scholars (if identified by the respective scholarship)
The deadline for submission of the abstracts of paper proposals is 15 March 2024. Please send an abstract of approximately 300 words in PDF format via e-mail to both organizers of the special workshop. Participants will be notified by 31 March 2024 and selected participants will be requested to send their papers by 15 June 2024. Publication of a printed volume encompassing submitted full papers is planned for 2025