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MAPPING LEGAL RESEARCH

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2012

Mathias M. Siems  and
Daithí Mac Síthigh
Mathias M. Siems*
Affiliation:
Professor of Commercial Law, Durham University, and Research Associate, Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge.
Daithí Mac Síthigh*
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Law, University of Edinburgh.
*
Address for correspondence: Durham Law School, Durham University, 50 North Bailey, Durham DH1 3ET. Email: mathias.siems@durham.ac.uk.
Address for correspondence: School of Law, University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL. Email: Daithi.Mac.Sithigh@ed.ac.uk.
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Abstract

This article aims to map the position of academic legal research, using a distinction between “law as a practical discipline”, “law as humanities” and “law as social sciences” as a conceptual framework. Having explained this framework, we address both the “macro” and “micro” level of legal research in the UK. For this purpose, we have collected information on the position of all law schools within the structure of their respective universities. We also introduce “ternary plots” as a new way of explaining individual research preferences. Our general result is that all three categories play a role within the context of UK legal academia, though the relationship between the “macro” and the “micro” level is not always straight-forward. We also provide comparisons with the US and Germany and show that in all three countries law as an academic tradition has been constantly evolving, raising questions such as whether the UK could or should move further to a social science model already dominant in the US.

Keywords

Legal ScholarshipLegal ResearchUniversitiesUnited Kingdom
Type
Articles
Information
The Cambridge Law Journal , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 651 - 676
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 2012

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References

1 In Google Scholar “legal scholar” is the most popular term (34,200 hits) and “legal scientist” the least popular one (594 hits) [search on 3 July 2012].

2 Similar, but focussed on teaching: Leighton, Patricia, Mortimer, Tony and Whatley, Nicola, Today's Law Teachers: Lawyers or Academics? (London 1995)Google Scholar.

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4 For details see III. and IV., below.

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6 See the references in the following Parts.

7 For distinctions similar to the one of this article: Taekema, Sanne, “Relative Autonomy: A Characterisation of the Discipline of Law” in van Kling, Bart and Taekema, Sanne (eds.), Law and Method: Interdisciplinary Research into Law (Tübingen 2011), 33–53Google Scholar; Rubin, Edward L., “Law and the Methodology of Law” [1997] Wisconsin Law Review 521Google Scholar. For different ones see, e.g., McCrudden, Christopher, “Legal Research and the Social Sciences” (2006) 122 Law Quarterly Review 632Google Scholar; Siems, Mathias, “Legal Originality” (2008) 28 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 147Google Scholar.

8 For differences between legal systems see IV. A and C., below.

9 Of course, this also allows mixtures: see, eg, IV. A and B., below.

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16 International Legal Centre (Committee on Legal Education in Developing Countries), Legal Education in a Changing World (Uppsala: International Legal Centre, 1975), para 90. See also Becher, above n. 11, at p. 2 (academic law as a “humanities related profession”).

17 The background is Hans Kelsen, The Pure Theory of Law (Berkeley 1967).

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36 For instance, Southampton Solent's Faculty of Business, Sport and Enterprise, or the University of Gloucestershire's Faculty of Business, Education and Professional Studies.

37 University Groups at http://www.ucas.com/students/wheretostart/heexplained/universitygroups. It should be noted that during the time that this article was prepared, some movement between groups was in progress. The data is based on the membership of the groups as of 1 August 2012 but further change is not unlikely.

38 Donald T. Campbell, “Ethnocentrism of Disciplines and the Fish-Scale Model of Omniscience” in Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Sherif (eds.), Interdisciplinary Relationships in the Social Sciences (Chicago 1969) 3, 8.

39 See Baker, J. H., The Third University of England: The Inns of Court and the Common-Law Tradition (London 1990)Google Scholar; Bush, Jonathan A. and Wijffels, Alain A., Learning the Law: Teaching and the Transmission of Law in England, 1150–1900 (Cambridge 1999)Google Scholar.

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43 Cited in Barry Nicholas, “Jurisprudence” in M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford, Volume VII: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, Part 2 (Oxford 2000), 385 at p. 385.

44 Nicholas, above n. 43, at 385, 389. See also Frederick Henry Lawson, The Oxford Law School, 1850–1965 (Oxford 1968); Duxbury, above n. 12, at p. 70 (for Oxford and Cambridge).

45 See Brooke, above n. 41, at p. 216 (for Cambridge).

46 See Cairns, John W., “The Origins of the Edinburgh Law School: the Union of 1707 and the Regius Chair” (2007) 11 Edinburgh Law Review 300CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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49 See Asa Briggs, “History and the Social Sciences” in Walter Rüegg (ed.), A History of the University in Europe, Volume III (Cambridge 2004) 459, 479.

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51 See Twining, above n. 13, at 25–42.

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53 This point is made in general terms by Mary Kenkel, “Policy Change and The Challenge to Academic Identities” in Jurgen Enders and Egbert de Weert (eds.), The Changing Face of Academic Life: Analytical and Comparative Perspectives (London 2009), 78, 87.

54 Henkel, Mary, Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education (London 2000), 57Google Scholar.

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56 For a recent defence of humanities Collini, Stefan, What Are Universities For? (London 2012)Google Scholar; similarly Kronman, Anthony T., Education's End (New Haven 2007)Google Scholar and Newman, John Henry, The Idea of a University (London 1852)Google Scholar. For legal education see also Bradney, Anthony, Conversations, Choices and Chances: The Liberal Law School in the Twenty-first Century (Oxford 2003)Google Scholar.

57 Henkel, above n. 54, at p. 32.

58 For this point see Gabriele Griffin, Pam Medhurst and Trish Green, Disciplinary Barriers between the Social Sciences and Humanities, National Report on the UK, January 2005, available at http://www.york.ac.uk/res/researchintegration/National_Report_UK.pdf, at 16.

59 See also http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/xrcprogrammes/Pages/home.aspx (for funding of “cross-council research”); a recent example (with law as a key component) is the funding of the Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise & Technology by the AHRC, ESRC and EPSRC: http://www.create.ac.uk.

60 Formerly, the RAE. See http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/.

61 Previously called the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). For its history see Robert Lee, “Socio-Legal Research – What's the Use?”, in Philip A. Thomas, Socio-Legal Studies (Aldershot 1997) 76.

62 AHRC/ESRC Joint Statement, available at http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/FundingOpportunities/Pages/Subjectstatement.aspx

63 Interaction with research councils has been identified as a key aspect of discipline formation and identity, despite the autonomy of universities regarding the recognition or configuration of disciplines and academic units: Griffin et al., above n. 58.

64 On the importance of the learned society in the construction of the discipline, see Henkel, above n. 54, at p. 189.

65 More generally on the history of the SLS see Fiona Cownie and Cocks, Raymond, ‘A Great and Noble Occupation!’: The History of the Society of Legal Scholars (Oxford 2009)Google Scholar.

66 SLSA Statement, also available at www.kent.ac.uk/nslsa/images/slsadownloads/slsaexec/minutes%2520slsa%2520e%252014.01.2010.doc.

67 But for the problems of defining “socio-legal” see, e.g., Philip A. Thomas, “Socio-Legal Studies: The Case of Disappearing Fleas and Bustards” in Philip A. Thomas, Socio-Legal Studies (Aldershot 1997) 1.

68 Though law schools may consist of separate departments (e.g., the School of Law at Queen Mary, University of London, consisting of the Department of Law and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies).

69 For Japan see Miyazawa, Setsuo, Chan, Kay-Wah and Lee, Ilhyung, “The Reform of Legal Education in Asia” (2008) 4 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 333CrossRefGoogle Scholar (division between undergraduate law faculties and postgraduate US-style law schools). For Canada see the two “sections” of the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law: http://www.commonlaw.uottawa.ca and http://www.droitcivil.uottawa.ca/ (both of which are bilingual).

70 See Section A above.

71 Kronman, above n. 56, at p. 6.

72 Accredited Doctoral Training Centres, available at http://www.esrc.ac.uk/funding-and-guidance/guidance/postgraduates/doctoral-training-centres.aspx.

73 See Becher, above n. 11, at p. 151; Griffin et al., above n. 58; Sheldon Rothblatt, “Curriculum, Students, Education” in Walter Rüegg (ed.), A History of the University in Europe, Volume IV, 238, 245.

74 Gary Watt, “The Soul of Legal Education” (2006) 3 Web Journal of Current Legal Issues, at http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/2006/issue3/watt3.html

75 Balkin, Jack M., “Interdisciplinarity as Colonization” (1996) 53 Washington and Lee Law Review 949, 957Google Scholar. See also Vick, Douglas W., “Interdisciplinarity and the Discipline of Law” (2004) 31 Journal of Law and Society 163Google Scholar; Siems, Mathias M., “The Taxonomy of Interdisciplinary Legal Research: Finding the Way Out of the Desert” (2009) 7 Journal of Commonwealth Law and Legal Education 5Google Scholar.

76 See Genn, Dame Hazel, Partington, Martin and Wheeler, Sally, Law in the Real World: Improving Our Understanding of How Law Works: Final Report and Recommendation (London 2006) 2Google Scholar.

77 Becher, above n. 11, at p. 24.

78 Becher, above n. 11, at p. 136.

79 See Vollans, Tim, “The Law School with two Masters?” (2008) 2 Web Journal of Current Legal IssuesGoogle Scholar, available at http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/2008/issue2/vollans2.html.

80 Janet Gail Donald, “The Commons: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters” in Carolin Kreber (ed.), The University and its Disciplines: Teaching and Learning Within and Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries (Abingdon 2009) 35, 41.

81 For the first point see Fiona Cownie, “Contextualising Stakeholders in the Law School” in Fiona Cownie (ed.), Stakeholders in the Law School (Oxford 2010) 1, 9. For the second one Braun, Alexandra, “Professors and Judges in Italy: It Takes Two to Tango” (2006) 26 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 665, 666–670CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Collie, above n. 55 at p. 530. See also Thomas, above n. 67, at p. 17 (most legal scholars try to link their fields of teaching and research, according to a survey).

83 On the challenge to the discipline as the “primary form of epistemological organisation for the development and regulation of advanced knowledge”, see Kenkel, above n. 53, at 85. See also Geoffrey Lockwood, ‘Management and Resources’, in Walter Rüegg (ed.), A History of the University in Europe, Volume IV, 124, 131.

84 Polanyi, Michael, “The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory” (1962) 1 Minerva 54Google Scholar.

85 Becher, above n. 11, at p. 36.

86 See Becher, above n. 11, at pp. 44–48.

87 See, e.g., http://www.uea.ac.uk/ccp, http://www.bbk.ac.uk/law/our-research/centre-for-law-and-the-humanities, and http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/depts/lgir/research-centres/centre-for-family-law-and-practice/.

88 Henkel, above n. 54, at p. 122.

89 Becher, above n. 11. See now also Becher, Tony and Trowler, Paul, Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Culture of Disciplines 2nd edn, (Buckingham 2001)Google Scholar.

90 Cownie, Fiona, Legal Academics (Oxford 2004) 49–72Google Scholar.

91 Ibid., at p. 66.

92 Ibid., at p. 136. See also Cownie, Fiona, “The Death of the Textbook Tradition” (2006) 3 European Journal of Legal Education 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93 Cownie, above n. 90, at p. 198. In addition, there is the risk of factional disputes see also ibid, at p. 59 (“The existence of those fundamentally different approaches to law clearly brings with it the possibility of conflict between legal academics, of a kind which is not unknown to law schools.”).

94 Ellickson, Robert C., “Trends in Legal Scholarship: A Statistical Study” (2000) 29 Journal of Legal Studies 517Google Scholar.

95 See Landes, William and Posner, Richard, “Heavily Cited Articles in Law” (1996) 71 Chicago-Kent Law Review 825Google Scholar; Posner, Richard, “The Decline of Law as an Autonomous Discipline: 1962–1987” (1987) 100 Harvard Law Review 761CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 Edwards, above n. 12, at p. 35.

97 Hervé Tijssen, De Juridische Dissertatie Onder de Loep: De Verantwoording van Methodologische Keuzes in Juridische Dissertaties (PhD Thesis Tilburg, 2009), available at http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=94878.

98 Similar, for UK scholarship, McCrudden, above n. 7, at p. 646: “legal academics, in my experience at least, seldom appear to talk about methodology in the context of their research, whereas other social scientists often place particular importance on methodological issues”.

99 See Part II above.

100 For Germany, see Section C below.

101 Cesarini, David et al. , “Heritability of Cooperative Behavior in the Trust Game” (2008) 105 PNAS 3721–3726Google Scholar (on genetic, shared environment and unshared environment in the context of trust).

102 Mattei, Ugo, “Three Patterns of Law: Taxonomy and Change in the World's Legal Systems” (1997) 45 American Journal of Comparative Law 5, 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 Werner Menski, Comparative Law in a Global Context 2nd ed. (Cambridge 2006), 185.

104 See Section III C above.

105 David Sugarman, “Legal Theory, the Common Law Mind and the Making of the Textbook Tradition”, in William Twining (ed.), Legal Theory and Common Law (Oxford 1986) 26, 31. See also Dicey, above n. 40, at p. 18: the task of law professors is to set forth law as a coherent whole.

106 For the nature of doctrinal research see text accompanying n. 15, above.

107 See Stallybrass, William T.S., “Law in the Universities” (1948) 1 Journal of the Society of Public Teachers of Law 157, 160Google Scholar (advocating for a shift from “education for Law” to “education in Law”).

108 See, e.g., Campbell, C. M. and Wiles, Paul, “The Study of Law in Society in Britain” (1975–76) 10 Law and Society Review 551Google Scholar; Cotterrell, Roger, Law's Community (Oxford 1995) 71–90Google Scholar (on sociology of law in Britain); Ogus, Anthony, “Law and Economics in the United Kingdom: Past, Present, and Future” (1995) 22 Journal of Law and Society 26Google Scholar.

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110 McCrudden, above n. 7, at p. 642.; Twining, above n. 13, at p. 123. See also Twining, William, Law in Context: Enlarging a Discipline (Oxford 1997), 338–9Google Scholar: “legal scholarship today is generally more varied, more lively, more sophisticated, and more self-confident (…) than fifty years ago”.

111 Becher, above n. 11, at p. 156.

112 See Section A above.

113 The pilot study is available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2097698.

114 Collier, above n. 55, at p. 534.

115 For an anthology see Kennedy, David and Fisher, William W. (eds.), The Canon of American Legal Thought (Princeton 2006)Google Scholar. See also Kronman, Anthony T., The Lost Lawyer (Cambridge, Mass. 1993)Google Scholar and the references above n. 27–29 and 94–96.

116 See Sugarman, David, “A special relationship? American influences on English legal education, c. 1870–1965” (2011) 18 International Journal of the Legal Profession 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 Bartie, above n. 10, at p. 367.

118 See, e.g., Vogenauer, Stefan, “An Empire of Light? Learning and Lawmaking in the History of German Law” [2005] Cambridge Law Journal 481Google Scholar; Bohlander, Michael, “Radbruch Redux: The Need for Revisiting the Conversation between Common and Civil Law at Root Level at the Example of International Criminal Justice” (2011) 24 Leiden Journal of International Law 393, 405Google Scholar (emphasising the similarity between academic and judicial methods in Germany).

119 Hermann Kantorowicz (Gnaeus Flavius), Der Kampf um die Rechtswissenschaft (Baden-Baden 2002 [originally published 1906]).

120 See also Briggs, above n. 49, at p. 480 (Staatswissenschaft as including constitutional and public law, political economy, administration and fiscal science).

121 See Gelter, Martin and Grechenig, Kristoffel, “The Transatlantic Divergence in Legal Thought: American Law and Economics vs. German Doctrinalism” (2008) 31 Hastings International and Comparative Law Review 295Google Scholar; Mathias Siems, “A World Without Law Professors” in Mark Van Hoecke, Methodologies of Legal Research (Oxford 2011) 71.

122 See Section III A, above.

123 Few universities (e.g., Bonn) still have Faculties for Staatswissenschaften (see above n. 120), and even fewer (e.g., Lüneburg) have Faculties for Social Sciences.

124 For the UK see Leighton et al., above n. 2, at pp. 19–20 (large-scale study found that in 1995 almost half of all law teachers, including university degrees and professional courses, has significant experience of legal practice); SLSA discussion, (2011) 64 Socio-Legal Newsletter 4–5 (on the impact of the development of the PhD as an entry qualification on the type of legal research carried out in law schools). Different still Becher, above n. 11, at p. 108 (in the early 1980s in one of the leading law faculties only 5 out of 32 staff were Ph.D. graduates).

125 Nicky Le Feuvre and Milka Metso, Disciplinary Barriers between the Social Sciences and Humanities, Comparative Report, The Impact of the Relationship between the State and the Higher Education and Research Sectors on Interdisciplinarity in Eight European Countries, June 2005, 11.

126 See, e.g., Sandberg, Haim, “Legal Colonialism – Americanization of Legal Education in Israel”” (2010) 10/2 Global Jurist art. 6Google Scholar, available at http://www.bepress.com/gj/vol10/iss2/art6.

127 For the evolution of disciplines see Becher, above n. 11, at pp. 10, 21, 68. The original idea of paradigm shift is Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2nd ed. (Chicago 1970)Google Scholar.

128 We thank Chris Hanretty for pointing us towards this problem.

129 See MacDonald, Susan Peck, Professional Academic Writing in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Carbondale, Ill. 1994)Google Scholar. For law see Coulson, Douglas M., “Legal Writing and Disciplinary Knowledge-Building: A Comparative Study” (2009) 6 Journal of the Association of Legal Writing Directors 160Google Scholar.

130 See Guetzkow, Joshua, Lamont, Michèle, and Mallard, Grégoire, “What is Originality in the Humanities and the Social Sciences” (2004) 69 American Sociological Review 190Google Scholar (based on interviews).

131 For problems facing legal researchers see, e.g., Genn et al, above n. 76; Lee Epstein and Gary King, “The Rules of Inference” (2002) 69 University of Chicago Law Review 1.

132 Bradney, above n. 56, at pp. 123–6. See also Collier, above n. 55.

133 As explained in Siems, above n. 7, at p. 148.

134 See, e.g., the 2011/12 data of the AHRC and ESRC annual reports for research grants (including early career, speculative and small research grants), available at http://www.esrc.ac.uk/publications/annual-report/index.aspx (p. 35) and http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News-and-Events/Publications/Pages/Annual-report-and-accounts.aspx (p. 78): AHRC: 307 applications, 82 grants awarded (i.e. success rate 27%); amount awarded circa £29.7m ESRC 779 applications, 108 grants awarded (ie success rate 14%); total amount awarded circa £26.7m.

135 See http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/gtr.aspx. An example of this data can be found (for selected ‘subject areas’ such as regenerative medicine) at http://bis.clients.talis.com

136 Becher and Trowler, above n. 89, at pp. 8–9.