Lainopin ja empirian yhdistäminen tutkimuksessa

Kirjoittajat

• Outi Ratamäki Itä-Suomen yliopisto

Avainsanat:

lainoppi, empiirinen oikeustutkimus, metodinen pluralismi

Abstrakti

Combining doctrinal and empirical methods in legal research

The article identifies the challenges of combining doctrinal and empirical research approaches, analyses the general features of these challenges, and presents the possibilities for responding to them. The study has utilised an autoethnographic approach, i.e. the thematic areas to be addressed have been identified by reflecting on the author’s own research and teaching experience. There are three themes to be discussed: 1) knowledge interests and the purpose of the research, 2) the construction of the research setting and the intertwining of doctrinal and empirical studies, and 3) the challenges of incompatibility between doctrinal and empirical studies. One of the challenges in combining empirical and doctrinal approaches is that the knowledge interest of empirical legal research is not always legally normative. This means that in research combining empiricism and doctrinal interests, special attention must be paid to the research design, such as the relationship between the research questions. One of the challenges in multi-method research may also be that empirical data do not lend themselves to legal informational interest or cannot be delimited in a way that is meaningful from the perspective of the law. On a case-by-case basis, it is worth considering whether an empirical sub-question should be formulated for the research, even if the main question is doctrinal, if the research utilises materials that can be characterised as empirical (e.g. a set of legal decisions). This could challenge the researcher to take a more professional approach to handling the data, and the level of the research could rise from simply making direct observations to actual analysis. The analysis carried out in the article also gives reason to suggest that although empirical and doctrinal research are often considered to be fundamentally different from each other, they can intertwine in ways where a precise boundary cannot or should not be drawn.