Research Paper on

Doctrinal Methods of Legal

Research

Submitted To:

Dr. Tapan Kumar Chandola

Assistant Professor, Amity Law School

Submitted By:

Lokesh Chandra Ranjan

Enrollment No. A8101820141 [ Semester: 1]

Programme: LL.M. (Master of Laws), Batch: 2020-2021

Course Name: Research Method & Legal Writing

1|Page
 Acknowledgement

I would like to express special thanks of gratitude to my teacher of

Research Method & Legal Writing Dr. Tapan Kumar Chandola Sir who
gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on the
topic “Doctrinal Methods of Legal Research” which also helped me in
doing a lot of research and I come to know about so many things. I
thank my classmates of LL.M. who provided insight and expertise that
greatly assisted the research, I would like to thank a lot of people
without whose co-operation and support working on this project would
not have been so pleasurable and interesting. I am conducting this
research project not only for marks but to also enhance my knowledge.

Thank You.
 Contents

Serial Caption Page

No. No.
I. Abstract 4
II. Introduction 5
III. Doctrinal Method of Legal Research 6
IV. Jurisprudential Foundation 8
V. Purpose of doctrinal legal research 10

VI. Conclusion 13
VII. Bibliography 14
Abstract
Research means repeated search for something, to find out some different new
things or something special knowledge in the existing facts. Legal research is any
systematic study for that specific methodology which should be carried out.
Method is the way of doing something and Methodology is the science of a
particular subject. There are different methods of research that may be applicable
in legal research.

This paper discussed Doctrinal (Lawyers or Empirical) Methods of

Research to show The Legal Fraternity how to write with understanding
regarding the Merits, Demerits, of the doctrinallegal research. Thus, the
combination of methodologies, i.e., a mixed method using
ideological,social,and legal,can work together to achieve a better
understanding of the law.
 Introduction

Research means repeated search for something, to find out some different new
things or something special knowledge in the existing facts. Legal research is any
systematic study for that specific methodology which should be carried out.
Method is the way of doing something and Methodology is the science of a
particular subject. There are different methods of research that may be applicable
in legal research.

Lawyers, judges and jurists have widely been using doctrinal research as a
systematic means of legal reasoning since nineteenth century. Doctrinal research is
therefore established as the traditional genre of research in legal field. Also known
as, theory-testing or knowledge building research in the legal academia, it deals with
studying existing laws, related cases and authoritative materials analytically on some
specific matter. With its jurisprudential base on positivism, doctrinal legal research is
‘research in law’ rather than ‘research about law’.
Distinguished from literature review, content analysis or historical legal research,
doctrinal legal research studies legal propositions based on secondary data of
authorities such as conventional legal theories, laws, statutory materials, court
decisions, among others.

Where in Empirical research, researcher tries to collect knowledge or information

from first hand study or primary data related to his particular matter or topic and
after analysis and interpretation of those information he draws out the conclusion
of that research work. Empirical research is more concerned with social values and
people. Law is an integral part of the social process. It aims to organizing society
in a systematic and peaceful or orderly manner. So, the tool of research will have
to be altered to cope up with the present problems, or come up with various
measures to root-out the different social evils. And, thus, empirical legal
 research is one of the best tools for this purpose. Law is for the society and law is
also the outcome of present reaction of the society. Society being a dynamic
concept also influenced the law to become dynamic in character. For upgrading the
influence of law in this dynamic state, empirical legal research is only the solution.

This paper intends to bring to light and analyse Doctrinal and Non-Doctrinal legal
research, its purpose, distinctive characteristics and ongoing debate on
methodological usage. The paper underscores the need of convergence rather than
rivalry between the doctrinal and non-doctrinal socio legal research to address the
problems in legal field.

Doctrinal Method of Legal Research

Definition
As the word ‘doctrinal’ is a derivative of 'doctrine', let's begin with defining the
term 'doctrine'.

Dictionary Definition: Doctrine means “a principle, esp. a legal principle, widely

adhered to.”
Terry Hutchinson and Nigel Duncan define, “The word ‘doctrine’ is derived
from the Latin ‘doctrina’ which means ‘to instruct, a lesson, a precept’. The
doctrine includes legal concepts and principles of all types – cases, statutes, rules.
Doctrine has been defined as ‘a synthesis of rules, principles, norms, interpretive
guidelines and values. It explains, makes coherent or justifies a segment of the law
as part of a larger system of law. Doctrines can be abstract, binding or non-
binding’.”

Based on the observation of these two definitions, we come to know that legal
doctrine consists of body of rules associated with legal concept or principle that
could have long history of development. Hence, doctrinal legal research is all about
thorough enquiry in legal concepts, values, principles and existing legal texts such
as statutes, case laws etc.
In addition, eminent legal scholars have defined 'doctrinal legal research' in their
own contexts to explain various aspects of the research method including its
purpose, sources, particular nature of study, process, significance etc.
According to Prof. S. N. Jain, “Doctrinal research involves analysis of case law,
arranging, ordering and systematizing legal propositions and study of legal
institutions through legal reasoning or rational deduction.”

Dr. S.R. Myneni has defined, “A doctrinal research means a research that has been
carried out on a legal proposition or propositions by way of analysing the existing
statutory provisions and cases by applying the reasoning power.”

To Ian Dobinson and Francis Johns, “Doctrinal or theoretical legal research can be
defined in simple terms as research which asks what the law is in a particular area.

It is concerned with analysis of the legal doctrine and how it has been developed
and applied. This type of research is also known as pure theoretical research. It
consists of either a simple research directed at finding a specific statement of the
law or a more complex and in depth analysis of legal reasoning.”
Paul Chynoweth states that doctrinal legal research is concerned with the
formulation of legal “doctrines” through the analysis of legal rules. He ascertains,
legal doctrines clarify ambiguities within rules, place them in a logical and
coherent structure and describe their relationship to other rules. Deciding on which
rules to apply in a particular situation is made easier by the existence of legal
doctrines (for example, the doctrine of consideration within the law of contract).
He further describes, “Within the common law jurisdictions legal rules are to be
found within statutes and cases (the sources of law) but it is important to
appreciate that they cannot, in themselves, provide a complete statement of the law
in any given situation. This can only be ascertained by applying the relevant legal
rules to the particular facts of the situation under consideration.” Prof. Dr. Khushal
Vibhute & Filipos Aynalem has defined doctrinal legal research as research into
legal doctrines through analysis of statutory provisions and cases by the
application of power of reasoning. Thus it gives emphasis on analysis of legal
rules, principles or doctrines. The authors duo compare and contrast doctrinal legal
research with non-doctrinal one as follows, “doctrinal legal research endeavours to
develop theories, and non-doctrinal legal research endeavours to see as to whether
the theories, the doctrines, that we have assumed are appropriate to apply in
society at a given time, are still valid and relevant.” Doctrinal legal research is,
therefore, ‘research in law’ while non- doctrinal legal research is ‘research about
law’.
Based on the definitions provided by the scholars, it is found that doctrinal legal
research is analytical study of existing laws, related cases and authoritative
materials as a whole, on some specific matter. It can be considered as relatively a
theory-testing research which endeavors to seek whether theory involved within
subject is so far valid or not. Doctrinal legal research deals with verifying existing
knowledge on the legal issues. Since the society itself is of changing nature as per
the human needs, technological innovations and economic transformations,
knowledge on some particular area of law is also required to be replaced by newer
findings. While people keep following same thing in the society for a long, many
issues, and above all, efficacy of knowledge in some particular area of law maybe
below par at the moment. While society is changing day by day, proper and
systematic review of the existing knowledge on law is essential. Therefore
doctrinal legal research works as knowledge building research in the legal field.

Doctrinal research usually begins with developing legal proposition and the entire
analysis of the data from primary and secondary authorities is focused on testing
the proposition. Say, for example, while initiating a doctrinal legal research on the
issues of precedents, a legal researcher can construct a proposition that more than
two third of the precedents set by the Supreme Court lack convincing legal
reasoning behind them. The researcher needs to study bulk of data generated from
primary and secondary authorities related to case laws or the contents of the
precedents set by Supreme Court within certain timeframe, prior studies on such
precedents,related authoritative books and academic writings etc.
Researcher must analyse the case laws and legal reasoning factor given in Supreme
Court's judgements to supplement something new knowledge.

As characterised by the study of legal texts, case laws, authoritative materials,

researchers often used the terms like ‘traditional legal research’, ‘theoretical legal
research’, ‘library- based legal research’, ‘basic legal research’, ‘arm-chair legal
research’ and even ‘black-letter law research’ interchangeably to denote doctrinal
legal research.

Jurisprudential Foundation

Doctrinal legal research has its jurisprudential root on the positive or analytical
school of law. As doctrinal legal research pursues what is the law in specific issue,
its approach is merely analytical, or in other words, influenced jurisprudentially by
the positive school of thought. Doctrinal research is underpinned by positivism and
a view of the world where the law is objective, neutral and fixed. In the words of
prominent jurist of positive school, H.L.A. Hart, doctrinal research “takes an
internal, participant-oriented epistemological approach to its object of study.” Thus
doctrinal legal research is knowledge based research in law rather than research
about law. It does not go through the relationship of law with other disciplines of
society. Though law itself is of the normative character, which prescribes what
people ought to do or what ought not to do, doctrinal research does not dig out the
queries on human behaviour, conducts and relationship of law with other social
ingredients. As law is a normative science that regulates human conduct and
relationship with backing of sanction and at the same time, stability and certainty
of law are social values to be pursued, this posits doctrinal legal research at the
primary concern to legal researcher. Doctrinal legal research attempts to preserve
consistency in law on the basis of legal reasoning.
Researcher conducting doctrinal research usually analyses the existing laws for the
sake of stability and certainty in law, which could ultimately results in consistency
in justice delivery.

Historical Development

Doctrinal Legal Research has been dominant in the realm of research in law field
for over centuries. History of doctrinal legal research dates back to nineteenth
century while legal professionals were developed as clerks, law began developing
as case law and the Court's decisions went on updating the law in common legal
system. The doctrinal method lies at the basis of the common law and it has
remained as prominent legal research method all over the world to date. Dominant
influence of doctrinal method was seen in nineteenth and twentieth century legal
research along with the rise of common law system. Even the notion of doctrinal
also developed along with the doctrine of precedents.

The rules which were ‘evolved organically and slowly’ and applied by the Courts
in common legal system repeatedly and consistently were considered as doctrinal
legal concepts. Following such notion of doctrinal, doctrinal research in legal
concepts eventually come into existence in the common legal system.
Until the first decade of nineteenth century, law itself was not established as an
academic discipline in the common law world. At the same time as law gradually
developed into an academic field in nineteenth and twentieth century in Europe
especially in United Kingdom, doctrinal research emerged as an academic
instrument for legal research. Universities in the common legal system mostly
adopted doctrinal method as mainstream legal research method till the last decade
of the twentieth century.Outside the European continent, in Canada and Australia,
doctrinal legal research was formally defined as a category of research in 1980s.
The 1982 landmark study on the state of legal research and scholarship in Canada,
the Arthurs Report, added for the first time, non-doctrinal research category,
namely ‘fundamental research’ as a legal research which deals with philosophical
aspects related with other social genres. The committee formed in Australia to
review the research practices, headed by Dennis Pearce, categorised ‘doctrinal’ as
the prominent legal research followed by ‘reform-oriented’ and ‘theoretical’
research in its report in early 1980s.

Purpose of Doctrinal Legal Research

The following points respond to the query – why doctrinal research is important in
law. The major purposes of doctrinal legal research comprise, but are not limited to
the following:
a.) To construct new legal theories, principles and doctrines, to test them and add
new knowledge in the legal scholarship.
b.) To help maintain continuity, consistency and certainty of law.
c) . To resolve day-to-day client matters as it is more manageable and outcomes are
more predictable due to its focus on established sources.
d.)To advise courts or clients about the application of legal doctrine to specific
cases, transactions, or other legal events. To critically examine the judicial
opinions and in case of conflicts between the decisions of different court, to
suggest the resolution to those conflicts.
e.)To provide lawyers, judges and others with the tools needed to reach decisions
on an immense variety of problems, usually with very limited time at disposal.
f.)To develop a theory that tries to explain how law or areas of law fit together; to
conduct comparative and historical inquiries describing an earlier era or
contrasting legal regime; to expose tensions within a body of law, legal practices or
institutions; and to highlight these tensions and contradictions and attempt to link
them to larger psychological, social, or philosophic difficulties.
Important Points & Advantages /Merits of Doctrinal Research

There are many advantages associated with library-based research methodology.

Firstly, it is often traditionally taught that legal research methods should be
conducted in the early stages of legal training. As a result, most legal scholars
willfocus on the techniques used at the time, to initiate graduate research. In
addition, for new graduate students, there will be no shortage of experts capable
of providing training on ideological research. Secondly, because of the
proliferation of law schools and law firms, research conducted under this design is
likely to be of more acceptable character in the presence of legal research.
Doctrinal research still represents a"base" in the legal community and most
universities demand an even higher degree of work based on this ideological
framework.For practical purposes, idiosyncratic research methodology is
required. The busy practitioner tends to be concerned with the law “as it is”and
rarely has the time to consider research that does not fit within that paradigm
and time frame. Moreover, because of its focus on the sources
of jurisprudence, established research is more manageable and results more
predictable. For the postgraduate studies researcher, this may help with meeting
deadlines and contain

 Doctrinal legal research is highly academic in nature and its purpose is to

build new principles, add some new knowledge and provide foundation for
study on other various socio-legal issues.
 Laws should be made in a right way and legal contents are required to be
made strong. In the legislation process, very often, lawmakers deliberately
leave some sensitive part of law without interpretation with the view that
there are learned judges to interpret the issues if necessary.

 Doctrinal legal research boosts confidence of the judges, lawyers and the
jurists. A lawyer can do a good legal research in doctrinal approach even
during the litigating stage for a particular client. This can give input to the
judge for valid reasoning while deciding the case. Backed by the massive
knowledge acquired from doctrinal legal research, judges can be full
confident upon what they are doing and such conscious rulings of the court
could result in development of new concept in law. Public Interest Litigation
and Judicial Activism are the exemplary concepts thriving of late which can
 be considered as the consequence of doctrinal legal research.

Doctrinal Legal research, in proactive manner, is much essential to introduce

new concepts and positive changes in law practices, judicial decisions,
administration of justice and overall justice delivery mechanism. Hence
legal practitioners, judges and jurists are required to conduct doctrinal legal
research systematically based on the wide range of data deposited in the
library in the forms of principles, doctrines, statutory materials, treaties,
relevant international cases, judicial writings, authoritative books etc.
Doctrinal research can yield a clear understanding of particular legal issue in
the very limited span of time.

Disadvantages/Demerits of Doctrinal Legal Research

Availability of the reliable data is the biggest challenge in conducting doctrinal

research. Researcher must be competent enough to identify the reliable data and
make sure the data is of some kind of authority, either primary or
secondary.Funding providers often criticise doctrinal legal researcher for being
vague due to operating within the arcane paradigm.At a time when competition for
limited research funds is becoming more intense, and in which inter- disciplinary
work is highly valued and non-lawyers are involved in the assessment of grant
applications, lawyer-applicants who engage in doctrinal research need to be more
open and articulate about their methods.
Unless researcher is much acquainted with limitations of the doctrinal method,
research outcomes could possibly be ‘too theoretical, too technical, uncritical,
conservative, trivial and without due consideration of the social, economical and
political significance of the legal process’.
In studying, the context which the law operates and how the law relates to and
affects that context, doctrinal methodology does not offer an adequate
framework for addressing issues that arise because it assumes that the law exists in
an objective doctrinal vacuum rather than within a social framework or context.
The law does not operate in a vacuum. It operates within society and affects the
society. There is, therefore, scope for adopting and adapting other methodologies
utilized in other subjects in order to have more illuminated view of the law and its
functions. Lawyers may need more than doctrinal or library based research skills in
order to make their research more relevant for the wider world.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can say that it is easy to target a specific Legal Research
methodology and identify its strengths and weaknesses. However, it must be noted
that doctrinal and non-doctrinal legal research are the ultimate way to find the
answers that have been raised in the context of attempts to understand the
emerging issues in the framework of the law.

The socio-legal impact study of law on the basis of public opinion can bring
practical world problem to the policymaker's sight. But to make the public opinion
mature, the foundation again could be doctrinal research outcomes. Good opinion
formation always depends on how one has acquired right information about the
subject matter. Doctrinal legal researches give inputs for public to reach at well-
informed decisions, resulting in mature and right public opinion. The depository
knowledge generated from doctrinal legal researches could be basis for public
opinion formation on legal reforms, impact of particular law and those public
opinions can be brought as data through the empirical studies. To conclude, lots of
good things can be generated harmonising doctrinal and non- doctrinal legal
research methods when it comes to taking the legal scholarship at new height or
solving the legal problems in real life situation.
There is no hierarchy between methodologies and they are all of equal importance
for the development and understanding of the law. What is crucial is that
researchers must try and equip themselves with the necessary skills to enable them
to comfortably meet their research objectives. Undoubtedly, a well- versed scholar
will be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of any particular methodology,
and will work to obtain the benefits that result from a better quality of work. Often,
the combination of methodologies, i.e., a mixed method using ideological, social,
and legal, can work together to achieve a better understanding of the law.
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