Introduction:
Methodology may be a science that pertains to defining and systematizing methods, that is, appropriate ways of discerning the topic of investigation. Every society has a mythology surrounding the origins of rules of conduct and systems of law, revealing that law is not based on experimental data.
Accordingly, legal methodology may be a science handling method of discerning law and legal phenomena.
Legal Methodology consists of two things:
- Legal Research
- Legal Writing
Legal research and writing may be a discipline handling adequate skills and techniques for locating relevant legal materials and using them within the process of writing either in law or about the law.
Legal Research
1. Research: What does it mean?
In relation to the purpose it aims to accomplish, a concept can be better understood. The aim of the research is either to understand the prevailing state of knowledge or to add something new. It requires a scientific, thorough, diligent, and thorough inquiry into a chosen problem with the primary objective of contributing to the information that prevails. A directionless, unspecific, unsystematic, and mere brushing of the surface will provide us with results that can not reveal practical results.
2. The Purpose of Research
Apart from general understanding, of knowing that’s, pure, basic or fundamental research or to seek out something new as in sort of an answer that’s applied or action research, putting in broader terms a research fulfills one or more of the following objectives:
- To contribute to existing knowledge in a discipline (for example, law).
- To inform policy making (for example, crime, housing, education).
- To address a specific issue or question (for example, substance abuse on campus).
3. Legal Research
Taking a cue from the discussion above legal research is often understood as a scientific finding or ascertainment of law on an identified topic or within the given area as well as an inquiry into law with a view of creating advancement within the science of law. This is not a simple job of locating the law in a large mass of legislation that is continually modified and supplemented by rules, orders, directives, ordinances, court decisions, and bye-laws. Besides, a systematic probe into the underlying concepts and reasons of law is needed for advancement in the science of law. Legal analysis, therefore has a wide scope. Legislators, a judge, a lawyer, a law student, and a law teacher have to do so on an ongoing basis.
4. Purpose of Legal Research
Instead of working in a dynamic social sense, the legislation does not sit in a vacuum. It represents behavioral norms and behaviors and regulates and molds them as well. However, since these principles are often temporospatial, evolving with time and space, to cope with the changes, the law must adapt and be dynamic. Legal analysis is therefore necessary to evaluate the law, to point out legal ambiguities and shortcomings, to critically review laws to ensure continuity, consistency, and integrity of the law and its underlying policy, to carry out a social audit of law, and to recommend legislation reforms. Taking them one by one:
- Ascertaining the law
- Highlighting ambiguities and gaps
- Determining coherence, stability, and consistency
- Social auditing of law
- Suggesting reforms
5. Source of Information
The various sources of information can be classified into:
Primary Sources:
The sources that contain authoritative records of law made by lawmaking bodies is a primary source. They can be legislation, rules, regulations, orders, bye-laws by delegated authorities, and the authoritative decisions of the courts.
Secondary Sources:
The secondary sources are the ones that refer and relate to the law while not being themselves primary sources, for example, legal commentaries, abstracts, dictionaries, encyclopedia, and index.
6. Kinds of Legal Research
There are two types of legal research:
Doctrinal Legal Research:
The word doctrinal comes from a Latin doctor for “teacher”. Therefore this means that teaching of school, religion polities and groups. It means to teach and doctrine means, “teaching, learning”.
Non- Doctrinal Research:
It is concerned with finding the law, rigorously analyzing it, and coming up with logical reasoning behind it. Therefore, it immensely contributes to the continuity, consistency, and certainty of law. The basic information can be found in the statutory material i.e. primary sources as well in the secondary sources.
6. Process of Legal Research
Analysis is a process involving backward and forward motion between various phases so that they can not be isolated as neatly as possible. Nonetheless, to clarify the various steps, they can be divided into the following:
1. Choosing a focal point of Research
The first step in the process is to define and formulate a research issue. The researcher is sure to lose interest in the research if it is poorly described and not properly formulated. The researcher needs to have a clear purpose in mind. To that end, the researcher needs to define a neighborhood of general interest in that field as a neighborhood of particular interest and a specific feature within that area of particular interest that he would like to explore.
2. Review of Literature
This is important because it will make the findings useful as well as valuable. It is a study of the prevalent works relevant to the actual aspect of what has already been discussed; it will also include an understanding of what has not been discussed. The goal of the researcher is to add something new to the prevailing data state, so he has to choose between the latter region. This also justifies and makes it an ingenious contribution to his studies. It also helps to prevent potential pitfalls and advises areas in the research questions that may have been overlooked.
3. Formulation of Hypothesis
A researcher may re-phrase or reformulate the problem based on an extensive literature survey. In the form of a mere assertion or proposition indicating the relationship between variables, the validity of which is not known, this also depends on the character of the study. These ideas are known as hypotheses. Thus the validity or invalidity of which must be checked based on studies is a provisional assertion. The way it is structured gives a hint of the methods needed, the type of data required, and the method of analysis required for the report.
4. Research Design
The structure of the analysis is signified. It is specified by a logical structured scheduling of the analysis, a blueprint. While it may be provisional, since all the contingencies that can occur can not be foreseen by the researcher and he may therefore adjust as needed to improve the quality and reliability of his results.
5. Data Collection
It involves decision making as to the method to be employed to collect the data. That determines the fate of the research. For determining the acceptable method, a researcher has got to confine in mind the objectives of the research and therefore the scope of the inquiry. Data may be primary or secondary. Data collected by primary sources is primary. While one collected from another agency or available in some published form is secondary. Data has got to be relevant and authoritative that might primarily depend on the scope and focus of the research question.
6. Data Analysis
The next task after the collection of data is its analysis. The raw data has to be put to analysis to reflect the direction and trend. Analysis happens before interpretation. There is no clear-cut demarcation between the analysis since it is not complete without interpretation and the analysis should not precede interpretation. Thus they are interdependent. Analysis includes processes such as classification and categorization (arranging class data according to their similarity or affinity), coding (assigning symbols or numbers to each class so that they can be counted or tabulated), and tabulation (arranging data in requisite rows and columns, this can show the relationship between variables and also facilitate comparison). However, it is also important to examine cases in a legal analysis study with caution that two different sets of facts may lead to different conclusions or may be based on the reasoning that an earlier case law is often differentiated on the idea of the issue of law posed.
7. Interpretation of Data
Inferences are taken from the data collected. Inductive or deductive, it can be. Inductive is the inference from specific proposals to general proposals, while deductive is the inference from general proposals to specific proposals. The interpretation provides the wider objective of research results and also activates fresh research. Caution must, however, be exercised in evaluating the knowledge that needs to be unbiased and objective. Inaccurate and misleading assumptions may be caused by a wrong interpretation.
8. Report
Document writing is the last step. He conveys his work to the audience, however. The report contains essential information, which are the subject, the procedure used, and therefore the results received by the investigator. In transmitting the results, it has to be original and with precise consistency.
7. Problems in Legal Research
The major problems while undertaking legal research are as follows:
- Cultural problems
- Structural and procedural problems (for example, unsympathetic attitude of authorities.)
- Lack of resources, (for example, Access, money etc.)
- Incompetence (For example inadequate planning etc.)
- Lack of networking and forum
Legal Writing
Method of Description
Descriptive study explains the state of affairs as it exists, as its name suggests. The phenomenon or condition under study and its features are merely defined. Survey methods of all sorts, including contrast and fact-finding inquiries of various kinds, are the techniques widely used in descriptive study.
Method of Conceptual Analysis
A certain abstract idea(s) or hypothesis is said to be philosophical science. Philosophers and philosophers usually use it to establish new ideas or to re-interpret the prevailing ones. Accordingly, two dominant sorts of conceptual analysis are: “(1) analysis of the prevailing conceptual framework of and about law; (2) construction of latest conceptual frameworks with accompanying terminologies.”
Method of Evaluation
Evaluative research concerns “testing whether rules add practice, or whether or not they are in accordance with desirable moral, political, economic aims, or, in comparative law, whether a certain harmonization proposal could work, taking under consideration other important divergences within the legal systems concerned.”
Conclusion
A legal system can be thought of as a mathematical system, in the sense that we speak in terms of assumptions and presumptions. In practice, a legal system is non-mathematical, for the most part, often ignoring strict adherence to precedent, postulates, and principles. Concepts of efficacy, efficiency, implications for the administration of justice and, most fundamentally, social beliefs, political exigency, and chance (choices of judges and juries) come into play, overwhelming the structural framing of problems and their solutions.
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