Critical review of progress in legal methodology
Critical review of progress in legal methodology
A methodological assessment of six PhD theses
Introduction
Taekema and van Klink (2023) critically analyse the methodology justification in the current legal doctoral research. The paper placed the debate about the scientific nature of legal studies in the background and investigated if the long-term methodological discussion, especially in Dutch legal academia, led to better research among PhD students. The authors raise the question of whether the methodological dialogue has had a positive impact on the quality of legal dissertations by making them more transparent, more precise, and better justified.
The article appears as part of a special issue on developments in legal scholarship and is explicitly reflective in nature. Instead of asserting methodological innovation, the authors seek to evaluate methodological practice through the application of a normative assessment framework to six recently defended PhD theses. The target readers are legal scholars, doctoral supervisors, and researchers interested in research design, doctoral training, and academic standards. The article is, in general, a thoughtful and well-contextualised contribution; however, the conclusions it draws are, by necessity, cautious due to the study’s exploratory nature and limited empirical foundation.
Summary of the Article
Through the analysis of six PhD dissertations written at Dutch universities during the last ten years, the authors take a qualitative, evaluative research design. The selection of the dissertations includes a variety of legal research methods: doctrinal, empirical-legal, and interdisciplinary theoretical studies. The authors are more interested in capturing the diversity of methods than in the different disciplines, so this selection reflects their intention.
The study is all about the implementation and creation of a normative assessment framework based on two decades of Dutch methodological debate. Among the criteria that are included in this framework are: research aims, research questions, theoretical framework, normative framework, methodological justification, and academic and societal relevance. However, the authors restrict their assessment to transparency and justification, thereby carefully avoiding judgments that would otherwise be reliant on deep substantive expertise in the subject matter of each dissertation.
By means of organised qualitative analysis, the writers find the trends in the way doctoral researchers express (or do not express) their methodological choices. They conclude that while the goals and main questions of the research are usually well defined, there are still important shortcomings in the areas of normative justification, the connection between research aims and questions, and open discussion of methodological limitations. It is usually the case that empirical-legal dissertations show the most reflexivity regarding methodology, while doctrinal and theoretical studies consider their choices in this regard to be so obvious that they do not even mention them.
The authors wrap up by saying that methodological awareness has gotten somewhat better, especially compared to the past assessments of PhD work, but still, it is not something common in legal PhD research, and in many cases, very little has been developed.
Critique
Significance and Contribution to the Field
The article’s first major strength is its emphasis on doctoral dissertations as a place of methodological development. Through the examination of the PhD theses instead of the published articles, the authors are directly attending to the research training practices and the formation of scholars at the beginning of their careers. This particular focus is of great importance due to the fact that often the doctoral education is the place where the most basic methodological standards are first fully understood and taken in.
Besides, the study has also made a significant contribution on the conceptual level by bringing together the scattered methodological discussions into one unified assessment framework. This framework not only provides a good tool for evaluating legal research design but also has the potential of being used in doctoral supervision and research methods instruction for its pedagogical value.
On the other hand, the article’s contribution is mainly diagnostic and not transformative. It points out the recurring weaknesses in the methodological justifications, but does not provide much help as to how the doctoral training or the institutional practices may be put through restructuring to tackle these problems. Thus, the article creates room for more discussions but does not completely deliver prescriptive solutions.
Methodology and Research Design
However, the methodological limitations have a strong influence on the cross-over of the research findings. The research was restricted to Dutch theses, which raises the issue right away of whether the conclusions are valid for other legal systems or academic cultures. In addition, the inability to set up comparative bases, for example, theses from earlier periods or jurisdictions that have not engaged in a debate about methodology, makes it very difficult to demonstrate the degree of progress.
The qualitative case study method is suitable, considering the research question’s exploratory nature. The authors’ choice of doctrinal, empirical, and theoretical dissertations enables significant comparison across the different methods used in legal research. The clear acknowledgement of limitations in methodology—especially the small sample reliance and absence of substantive evaluation—reflects a good degree of reflexivity.
Moreover, the assessment is entirely based on the authors’ interpretative analysis. Though their professionalism adds weight to the argument, the lack of triangulation (e.g., supervisor interviews, doctoral candidates’ reflections, or quantitative indicators) restricts the evidentiary support.
Argumentation and Use of Evidence
The article is precisely laid out and well-reasoned. The authors always relate their empirical observations to the evaluation framework, and their analysis of the dissertations is very subtle and well-balanced. One of the strongest points in the paper is the distinction made between descriptive, normative, and evaluative research aims, and the showing of how the misalignment of these aims with the research questions can make the methodology unclear.
Nevertheless, some of the authors’ evaluations in the article are not fully supported by the evidence provided. The claims regarding “advancement” are still uncertain and mainly based on personal impressions due to the small size of the sample and the absence of longitudinal comparison. In a way, the authors have properly limited their conclusions, but the way the article is presented as “progress” may lead to a situation where it seems that more can be inferred from the data than is actually the case.
Ethical Considerations and Omissions
The article’s focus on normative frameworks as a key element of legal methodology is certainly one of its strong points. The authors present a strong case for the need of legal research done from the perspective of norms to be based on the very norms that are used to measure law or legal practice. The authors’ analysis shows that a large number of theses in the field of law, which are usually by doctoral students, present recommendations but do not give them an adequate description based on visibly set out normative standards.
However, the article is still not completely reflecting on the possible wider ethical and epistemological consequences of the methodological opacity, e.g. power changes in legal knowledge creation or unrevealed normativity being a potential risk. The authors’ engagement with the above issues could have made their work more critically rich.
Writing Style and Structure
The piece is of an analytical nature, well-structured and also eloquent in its expression. It is a smooth and comprehensible transition from the theoretical underpinnings to the development of the framework, the empirical examination, and the reflective conclusion. The authors always provide systematic signposting and meticulous exposition to make the material remain clear, even though there is a lot of it.
However, the length and detail of the article could serve as a barrier to the understanding of non-specialist readers or early-stage graduate students. The usage of more tangible examples or summarising tables could have raised usability while keeping the depth of the academic work unchanged.
Conclusion
Taekema and van Klink (2023) present an insightful and methodologically diligent evaluation of legal PhD theses, revealing both advancements and lasting weaknesses in the area of methodological justification. The authors make a very significant contribution by directing the focus from the discussions about methodologies to the actual research practices, and, more so, by providing a structured framework for evaluation.
On the other hand, the research has its limitations—the exploratory nature of the study, small sample size, and, most of all, the contextual specificity of the study—which affect the strength of its conclusions. Even though some awareness of the methodology has been developed, particularly in empirical-legal research, the major problems, such as normative justification, alignment of research aims, and articulation of relevance, are still to be solved in many dissertations.
Even if there are these restrictions, the paper still shines through as a starting point for further studies on doctoral methodology and it also provides significant inputs to the legal educators and supervisors. To validate the assertions of methodological advancement and to communicate specific changes in doctoral training, the researchers would need to conduct more investigations that include larger samples, different points of view, and mixed-method approaches.
Reference:
Taekema, S., & van Klink, B. (2023). Progress in legal methodology: A methodological assessment of six PhD theses. Law and Method, (July–September). https://doi.org/10.5553/REM/.000075
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