Contextualising Legal Research
Event organized by General jurisprudence and the Paul Scholten Centre
- Date
- 20 March 2025
- Time
- 13:00 -14:30
- Location
- Roeterseilandcampus - gebouw A
- Room
- 3.15
Methods of legal philosophy for lawyers
In our book Contextualising Legal Research, we devote two chapters to how and why legal philosophy and ethics should be included in doctrinal research. In this seminar, we will discuss those chapters. Basically, the methods discussed are continuous with methods used by doctrinal researchers and therefore relatively easy to include in doctrinal research; in a trivial sense, almost every doctrinal researcher includes elementary philosophical analysis. Even so, to execute them well, some philosophical training and supervision may be required.
Sanne Taekema is Professor of Legal Theory in the Erasmus School of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Bergen. She has a series of publications on legal research methods and interdisciplinarity of legal research. Her other main research theme is legal theory and the rule of law, particularly in a pluralist context, looking beyond the national state and considering legal mobilisation by civic actors.She is (co-) editor in chief of the open access journal Law and Method.
Wibren van der Burg is Professor of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory in the Erasmus School of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has published widely on research methods in law and in philosophy. The core theme in his research and teaching is the interaction between law, ethics and society. In May, Boom juridisch will publish his new book, entitled Rechtsfilosofie in een pluralistische wereld. Nadenken over de verantwoordelijkheid van juristen.
Sanne and Wibren argue that doctrinal research cannot be reduced to being either empirical or normative: it is interpretive or hermeneutical research. Therefore, it relies on the interpretive and argumentative methods of the humanities, even though it studies social reality and thus also requires empirical input. This hermeneutical character has major implications for research methodology. For example, to interpret a text, we need some – implicit or explicit – understanding of its context; therefore, even in doctrinal research some form of contextualisation is unavoidable.
