The question of method—of what is the ‘correct’, ‘superior’, or ‘best’ way to study law—lurks in the background of academic debates across numerous fields of legal study.

In European and international law, as elsewhere, various new(er) methodologies and approaches have been gaining ground - alongside the traditional practices of doctrinal analysis and legal hermeneutics. Political geography has contributed to the understanding of the spread of EU law over time and its interactions with place and space. Anthropological approaches have given us a sense of how various national and international actors use EU law to achieve their goals, and how these goals are developed in and through institutions and communities. Quantitative studies have offered new insights into the practices of courts and the effectiveness of legislative design. Discourse analysis has become an important tool for linking politics and ideology to doctrinal research.

The salient question lurking behind these developments is: what do these new methods and approaches mean for the study of law?

In Beyond Method: The Politics of Legal Research we aim to shed light on the background struggles – the politics - underlying various methodological choices. The choice of method, or theoretical approach, we argue, is never ‘innocent’. Instead, it is part of the diverse political struggles that we, as legal scholars, engage in.

Method is, we suggest, a main way how to deal with the power of knowledge production in legal scholarship. Legal scholars fight many political battles – all the while they are pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake. They fight institutional battles for power in their own disciplinary setting. They engage in politics of knowledge more generally, when debating the legitimacy of law and ‘legal science’ vis-à-vis other disciplines or trying engaging with methodological approaches from other disciplines. Finally, lawyers sometimes also engage in methodological struggles as a direct contribution to big politics: realizing that the way we do law has a signficant influence on the way those in power do law.

Beyond Method: The Politics of European Legal Research

List of speakers: 

1. Marija Bartl (University of Amsterdam)
2. Pola Cebulak (University of Amsterdam)
3. Jessica Lawrence (University of Essex)
4. Hans-W. Micklitz (European University Institute)
5. Poul F. Kjaer (Copenhagen Business School
6. Christina Eckes (University of Amsterdam)
7. Siniša Rodin (Court of Justice of the EU)
8. Ruth Dukes (University of Glasgow)
9. Damjan Kukovec (Middlesex University, London)
10. Alessandra Arçuri (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
11. Lyn K.L. Tjon Soei Len (University of Amsterdam)
12. Or Brook (University of Leeds)
13. Fernanda Nicola (American University)
14. Joana Mendes (University of Luxembourg)
15. Candida Leone (University of Amsterdam)
16. Irina Domurath (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
17. Juan Mayoral (University of Copenhagen)
18. Tommaso Pavone (University of Oslo)
19. Julien Bois (Hertie School of Governance)
20. Mark Dawson (Hertie School of Governance)
21. Gareth Davies (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)