Genealogy of Legal Research Methodology

Abstract

Teaching methods in research methods remain the least-explored territory in the pedagogy of social studies discipline, more so in the course of professional legal education, while the same deserves attention in legal academics for a long back. In the curricula of new-generation higher education institutions in general, of premier national law universities in particular, the concerned course is named ‘legal method’ in the undergraduate programme and ‘research methodology’ in postgraduate programmes, including research programmes. The forthcoming effort concerns the latter, meant for the so-called postgraduate programme, something more often than not named by higher education institutions in India as ‘research methodology’. With discursive reasoning of his own, the author resorts to the following nomenclature, ‘Legal research methods’, and names his piece accordingly. The author explores all the major means and methods of legal research jointly and severally, thereby getting them clarified and classified in their nitty-gritty. Last yet not least, the author demonstrates technical differences between research methods and research methodology, thereby pleading for the justified usage of technical terms towards better precision, whenever and wherever they suit to technical sense of the terms. Besides, the author underscores the technical distinction between the pedagogy of legal methods for undergraduates in professional legal education and that of research methods for postgraduates in academic legal education, respectively.

The intensity of research demanded by the highly specialised nature of legal studies today can only be achieved by a close regard to the detailed methodologies that have been worked out in the field of legal research.—C. G. Weeramantry. ²