Incluye bibliografía

1. Legal doctrine: which method(s) for what kind of discipline? 2. The method of a truly normative legal science. 3. Explanatory non-normative legal doctrine. Taking the distinction between theoretical and practical reason seriously. 4. A world without law professors. 5. Open or autonomous? The debate on legal methodology as a reflection of the debate on law. 6. Methodology of legal doctrinal research; a comer on westerman. 7. The epistemological function of la doctrine horatia muir watt. 8. Maps, methodologies and critiques: confessions of a contract lawyer. 9. Legal research and the distinctiveness of comparative law. 10. Does one need an understanding of methodology in law before one can understand methodology in comparative law? 11. Comparative law, legal linguistics and methodology of legal doctrine. 12. Doing what doesn’t come naturally, on the distinctiveness of comparative law. 13. Promises and pitfalls of interdisciplinary legal research: the case of evolutionary analysis in law. 14. Behavioural economics and legal research. 15. Theory and object in law: the case for legal scholarship as indirect speech

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.

Hasta hace poco las preguntas sobre la metodología en la investigación jurídica se han limitado en gran medida a la comprensión del papel de la investigación doctrinal como una disciplina académica. A su vez, esto ha implicado hacer preguntas no solo sobre la cobertura sino, fundamentalmente, preguntas sobre la identidad de la disciplina. ¿Es (principalmente) descriptivo, hermenéutico o normativo? ¿Debería ser también explicativo? La erudición legal se ha dividido entre, por un lado, captar la realidad expansiva de la ley y su contexto, y, por el otro, reducir este conjunto complejo a proporciones manejables. El análisis puramente interno de un sistema legal, aislado de cualquier contexto social, sigue siendo una opción, y todavía se ve en el enfoque de la academia francesa, pero como la ley apunta a ordenar a la sociedad e influir en el comportamiento humano, muchos expertos ser insuficiente.

En consecuencia, se han realizado muchos intentos para concebir la investigación jurídica de manera diferente. Los enfoques sociales científicos y comparativos han demostrado ser fructíferos. Sin embargo, ¿la introducción de otros enfoques deja simplemente un residuo de "doctrina legal", a la cual se pueden agregar bolsas de ciencias sociales, o se debe fusionar la doctrina jurídica con las ciencias sociales? ¿Cómo sería un campo interdisciplinario tan amplio y cuáles serían sus métodos? Este libro es un intento de responder algunas de estas preguntas.