(10) What is the functional method of comparative legal research?

Divide Doctrinal research (the law-faculty default): the library research into the primary legal sources — statutes, precedents, doctrine — answering "what is the law?" on a defined issue. The method's steps: the issue's statement → the sources' retrieval (the statute, the case-law, the commentary) → the analysis (the rules' synthesis, the ratios' extraction, the conflicts' reconciliation) → the conclusion (the law's statement, the gaps' note). Strengths: precision, normative authority, feasibility (the desk and the database), and the practice's alignment (the advice and the brief are doctrinal products). Limits: the law-in-action's absence (the rule without the street — Roscoe Pound's "law in books vs. law in action" gap), the value-blindness (the "is" without the "ought"), the circularity risk (the doctrine citing the doctrine). Non-doctrinal (empirical/socio-legal) research: law studied through facts about people and institutions — the law's causes, implementation and effects. The questions: does the rule work? who is affected? what do the actors do? The method: the social formulation of the problem (Unit 3), the testable hypothesis, the field tools (Unit 5's interviews, surveys, observation), the data's processing (Unit 6), the interpretation (the law re-read in the data's light). Strengths: the reality's warrant, the reform's evidence, the policy's evaluation. Limits: cost and time; the access obstacles (the courts' and prisons' permission protocols); the sampling traps; the generalisation's discipline; the ethics'…