Unit 2: Approaches of Legal Research
2.1 Historical Legal Research Approach
The approach: law as an historical artefact — the tracing of institutions, doctrines and statutes through time (the origins, the influences, the evolution’s causes). The method: the sources’ archaeology — the Lichchhavi inscriptions and the Shah-era avilekh (Nepali Legal System, Semester 4); the Muluki Ain and the Janga Bahadur codification’s contexts (Nepali History, Semester 1); the statute’s amendment-ladder (the contract law’s 2023 → 2056 → 2074 line — Contract-I, Semester 4); the doctrine’s migration (the reception of common-law ideas). The tools: documentary criticism (the internal-and-external evidence), chronology, comparison across eras. The strengths: the explanation nothing else gives (why the law is the shape it is), the reform’s perspective (the path-dependence’s map). The limits: the sources’ survival bias (Nepal’s archive gaps), the antiquarian temptation (the past studied for its own sake), the present’s under-analysis. Nepali exam-anchors: the 1854 Code’s history; the judiciary’s evolution ladder; the legal-profession’s development.
2.2 Analytical Legal Research Approach
The approach: law as a logical structure — the dissection of the existing law’s concepts, rules and relationships as they stand (the timeless jurisprudential questions: what is a right, a duty, ownership, possession — Jurisprudence’s terrain, Semesters 2–3). The method: definition-and-distinction (the concept’s anatomy), classification (the genus-species ladders), the internal-consistency tests (the rule’s coherence with its chapter), the interpretation questions (the literal-purposive spectrum — Legal Method, Semester 1). The products: the restatements, the commentaries (the muluki-ain commentaries’ tradition), the structural analyses (the course’s own tables!). The strengths: the lawyer’s daily bread (the rule’s exact content), the system’s hygiene (the inconsistency’s exposure). The limits: the closed-system’s blindness (the social facts outside the texts), the formalism’s risk (logic without consequence).
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