Rethinking legal scholarship a transatlantic dialogue

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Why do we do what we do? : comparing legal methods in five law schools through survey evidence / Mathias M. Siems and Daithí Mac Síthigh -- The jurist in the global age / Neil Walker -- Field, frame and focus : methodological issues in the new legal world / Roger Brownsword -- Transatlantic publication fashions : in search of quality and methodology in law journal articles / Reza Dibadj -- What is legal doctrine? : on the aims and methods of legal-dogmatic research / Jan M. Smits -- Making doctrine for European law / Nils Jansen -- A European advantage in legal scholarship? / Hans-W. Micklitz -- From coherence to effectiveness : a legal methodology for the modern world / Edward L. Rubin -- Ranking, peer review, bibiometrics and alternative ways to improve the quality of doctrinal legal scholarship / Rob van Gestel -- The logic of the law : the analytic foundations of methodology / Neil Komesar -- The role of empirical legal studies in legal scholarship, legal education and policy-making : a US perspective / Deborah R. Hensler and Matthew A. Gasperetti -- A behavioural law and economics perspective : between methodolgy and ideology when behavioural sciences meet law / Orly Lobel -- Freedom and method / Paul W. Kahn.

"Although American scholars sometimes consider European legal scholarship as old-fashioned and inward-looking and Europeans often perceive American legal scholarship as amateur social science, both traditions share a joint challenge. If legal scholarship becomes too much separated from practice, legal scholars will ultimately make themselves superfluous. If legal scholars, on the other hand, cannot explain to other disciplines what is academic about their research, which methodologies are typical, and what separates proper research from mediocre or poor research, they will probably end up in a similar situation. Therefore we need a debate on what unites legal academics on both sides of the Atlantic. Should legal scholarship aspire to the status of a science and gradually adopt more and more of the methods, (quality) standards, and practices of other (social) sciences? What sort of methods do we need to study law in its social context and how should legal scholarship deal with the challenges posed by globalization?" -- Page i.