2.1.7 Nature and Scope of Legal Research

Nature: • It is source-bound: legal research lives on primary sources — constitutions, statutes, regulations, precedents, treaties. • It is argumentative: its product is not a statistic but a reasoned position. • It can be doctrinal (library, texts, logic) or empirical/non-doctrinal (field, people, data) or both. • It is prescriptive as well as descriptive: legal research not only describes the rule but evaluates what the rule ought to be. Scope: • Interpretation and analysis of legislation, precedent and doctrine • Law reform studies and pre-legislative scrutiny • Evaluation of implementation (e.g., has the Domestic Violence Act 2066 protected victims in practice?) • Comparative and international legal studies • Legal history and jurisprudence • Court administration, delay-reduction and access-to-justice studies • Empirical socio-legal studies (crime, legal awareness, legal aid)