1.3 Meaning, Nature and Types of Legal Research

Legal research = the systematic inquiry into law, legal institutions and legal behaviour — discovering what the law is (the rule-content), how it works (the practice and its effects), and what it ought to be (the reform). Its nature: a dual discipline — at once normative (dealing with authoritative texts: constitutions, statutes, precedents) and empirical (dealing with the social world the texts govern: courts, actors, compliance); its materials both primary (the law's own sources) and secondary (the commentary) and field-generated (the interviews, statistics); its method both the library and the field. Types of legal research (the exam's classification): Doctrinal — the library research into statutes and precedents: "what is the law on X?"; Non-doctrinal (empirical/socio-legal) — the field research into the law's working: "what does the law do to X, and X to the law?"; Historical — the law's development traced (the Ain's evolution, the judiciary's ladder); Comparative — the law across systems (Nepal's bail rules beside India's); Analytical — the concepts' logical anatomy (what is a right, ownership, possession); Descriptive vs. exploratory vs. explanatory vs. evaluative — the knowledge-claim ladder applied to law; Fundamental vs. applied — the jurisprudential inquiry vs. the amendment's impact study.