Research Methods in Law

Dawn Watkins, Mandy Burton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040405666
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

Explaining in clear terms some of the main methodological approaches to legal research, Research Methods in Law is written by specialists in their fields, researching in a variety of jurisdictions.

Covering a range of topics, including feminist approaches, economic analysis of the law and socio-legal studies, each contributor addresses the topic of 'lay decision makers in the legal system' from their particular methodological perspective. This focus on one main topic allows the reader to draw comparisons between methods with relative ease. This third edition has been fully updated, and includes bullet point summaries at the start of each chapter. There are also two new chapters covering biographical approaches and creative approaches.

The broad range of contributors makes Research Methods in Law well suited to an international audience, and it is ideal reading for PhD students in law, undergraduate dissertation students in law, LL.M Research students and early year researchers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Doctrinal research: researching the jury
• 2 Socio-legal studies: a challenge to the doctrinal approach
• 3 Doing empirical research: exploring the decision-making of magistrates and juries
• 4 Legal research in the humanities
• 5 Legal history
• 6 Comparative law and its methodology
• 7 Biographical approaches: using life writing as a research method
• 8 Economic analysis of law, or economically informed legal research
• 9 The master’s tools? A feminist approach to legal and lay decision-making
• 10 Law and anthropology: legal pluralism and ‘lay’ decision-making
• 11 Creative approaches
• 12 Critical legal ‘method’ as attitude
• Index