2.5 Non-Doctrinal Research Approach

The approach: the empirical/socio-legal research — law studied through facts about peopleand institutions (not the texts' logic alone): the law's causes, implementations and effects. The questions: does the rule work? who is affected? what do the actors do? (the Bagchand directive's implicit research question: how bad was untouchability's enforcement?). The method: the research problem's social formulation (Unit 4), the hypothesis (testable, falsifiable), the field tools (Unit 3's interviews, surveys, observations), the data's processing (Unit 5's qualitative-quantitative analysis), the interpretation (the law's re-reading in the data's light). The strengths: the reality's warrant, the reform's evidence, the policy's evaluation. The limits: the cost and time; the access obstacles (the courts' and prisons' gates — the permission protocols); the sampling's traps; the generalisation's discipline (the case-study's honesty about its reach); the ethics' weight (Unit 6.5 — the human subjects' consent). The doctrinal/non-doctrinal table (the exam's favourite): | Point | Doctrinal | Non-doctrinal | |---|---|---| | Question | What is the law? | What is the law's life? | | Sources | Statutes, cases, doctrine | People, institutions, records, field data | | Method | Analysis, synthesis, interpretation | Hypothesis, sampling, fieldwork, statistics | | Output | The rule's authoritative statement | The law's measured working | | Home | The library, the database | The field, the questionnaire | | Companion skills |…