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Law and Method


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Editorial

Access_open Special Issue on Active Learning and Teaching in Legal Education

Editorial

Authors Bart van Klink, Hedwig van Rossum and Bald de Vries
Author's information

Bart van Klink
Bart van Klink is Professor of Legal Methodology, Faculty of Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Hedwig van Rossum
Hedwig van Rossum is lecturer-researcher in the Department of Legal Theory at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Bald de Vries
Bald de Vries is lecturer at the Department of Jurisprudence, Constitutional and Administrative Law of the Faculty of Law (JCAL), Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Book Review

Access_open Kestemont, Handbook on Legal Methodology. A Review

(Book review of Kestemont, L. (2018). Handbook on Legal Methodology. From Objective to Method. Cambridge: Intersentia, xiii + 97 pp.)

Authors Wibren van der Burg
Author's information

Wibren van der Burg
Wibren van der Burg, Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University of Rotterdam and School of Law, Queen Mary University of London.

    In legal education, criticism is conceived as an academic activity. As lecturers, we expect from students more than just the expression of their opinion; they have to evaluate and criticize a certain practice, building on a sound argumentation and provide suggestions on how to improve this practice. Criticism not only entails a negative judgment but is also constructive since it aims at changing the current state of affairs that it rejects (for some reason or other). In this article, we want to show how we train critical writing in the legal skills course for first-year law students (Juridische vaardigheden) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We start with a general characterization of the skill of critical writing on the basis of four questions: 1. Why should we train critical writing? 2. What does criticism mean in a legal context? 3. How to carry out legal criticism? and 4. How to derive recommendations from the criticism raised? Subsequently, we discuss, as an illustration to the last two questions, the Dutch Urgenda case, which gave rise to a lively debate in the Netherlands on the role of the judge. Finally, we show how we have applied our general understanding of critical writing to our legal skills course. We describe the didactic approach followed and our experiences with it.


Bart van Klink
Bart van Klink is Professor of Legal Methodology, Department of Legal Theory and History, Faculty of Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Lyana Francot
Lyana Francot is Associate Professor of Legal Theory, Department of Legal Theory and History, Faculty of Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Article

Access_open Basic Building Blocks Map as a Key to Activating Education. Special Issue on Active Learning and Teaching in Legal Education Bart van Klink, Hedwig van Rossum & Bald de Vries (eds.)

Keywords active participation, Basic Building Blocks Map (BBB Map), cognitivism & constructivism, teaching method
Authors Renetta Bos
AbstractAuthor's information

    When it comes to learning, mapping turns out to be an effective tool. There is a wide variety of information maps, such as mind maps, argument maps and concept maps. This paper develops a teaching method that puts mapping at the centre of a seminar. It builds upon ideas of cognitivism and constructivism. The proposed didactic method incorporates a new variant of mapping, Basic Building Blocks Map (BBB Map), with a specific style of teaching. It is argued that this teaching method leads to engaged and active student participation. By dividing the subject up into small pieces and searching for answers to questions interactively, the student will learn more effectively. The paper concludes by providing teachers tools to put the method of BBB Mapping into practice.


Renetta Bos
Renetta Bos is a lecturer at the Institute of Jurisprudence, Constitutional and Administrative Law (Utrecht University). She has graduated with a number of qualifications in law and philosophy: Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (Law, Leiden University), Philosophy of Management and Organisation (Philosophy, VU Amsterdam) and Philosophy of Law (Philosophy, Leiden University). In addition, she has studied at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena (Germany). In her tutorial teaching, she makes use of her experience gained at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Free University of Amsterdam. She thanks Hedwig van Rossum, Bald de Vries, Vera van de Glind, and an anonymous referee from the journal for useful comments on earlier versions of this article.
Article

Access_open The Normative Framework of Labour Law

Keywords labour law, normative framework, inequality, social justice
Authors Nuna Zekić
AbstractAuthor's information

    This article looks at how normative questions, i.e. ‘what should the law be?‘, are approached in modern labour law scholarship. A distinction is made between internal and external normative frameworks for analysis, whereby internal frameworks are made up of principles, values or standards that are part of the law and the external frameworks are made up of theories outside of law. As a functional legal field, labour law can also benefit to a great deal from empirical research. However, the article argues that empirical facts by themselves have a limited normative value and that we need a normative framework in order to answer normative and evaluative questions. Therefore, the aim of the article is to review, clarify and evaluate the internal normative framework of labour law.


Nuna Zekić
Associate Professor, Department of Labour Law and Social Policy, Tilburg University.
Article

Access_open Using Case Studies for Research on Judicial Opinions. Some Preliminary Insights

Keywords case study, judicial opinions, empirical legal research, qualitative methods, research on judicial opinions
Authors Mateusz Stępień
AbstractAuthor's information

    There is a pressing need to develop a research methodology for studying judicial opinions that goes beyond both dogmatic analyzes and the established positions developed within philosophy of law and legal theory (e.g. the hermeneutic and argumentative approaches). One possible way is to adopt or modify methodologies developed within empirically oriented social sciences. Most social science textbooks devoted to methodology of empirical research deal with case studies. So far, this research framework developed within the social sciences has not been applied directly to judicial opinions, though they have been used for some empirical legal research studies. Even et first sight, case study research would appear to have potential for use with judicial opinions. The aim of the paper is to answer the question, how and to what extent can case study methodology developed within the social sciences be fruitfully used to examine judicial opinions? The general answer is undoubtedly positive (case studies can bring new, non-trivial threads to the research methodology on judicial opinions), though with many serious and far-reaching reservations.


Mateusz Stępień
Assistant Professor, Department of Law and Administration, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland.

    This article builds upon the work of James Boyd White as well as on Shelley’s ‘A defence of Poetry’ (1840) and reports upon an experiment in which students use poetry as a means to understand philosophical texts. The experiment had a double goal: first, I sought to challenge students in reading a philosophical text differently with an aim to better understand the text. The second goal was to challenge students to think about the text differently, more critically and analyse its relevance for the contemporary world. In the end, using imagination, is the claim, contributes to students finding their own ‘voice’.


Bald de Vries
Dr Bald de Vries is lecturer at the Department of Jurisprudence, Constitutional and Administrative Law of the Faculty of Law (JCAL), Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands, u.devries@uu.nl.
Article

Access_open Teaching Socio-Legal Research Methodology: Participant Observation. Special Issue on Active Learning and Teaching in Legal Education

Keywords Participant observation, sociolegal research, methodology, teaching
Authors Marc A. Simon Thomas
AbstractAuthor's information

    The basics of how to conduct participant observation are not taught in law schools. This is striking because this methodology has become a common feature of qualitative research and could be very useful in sociolegal research. For those interested in studying ‘law in practice’ instead of ‘law in the books’, qualitative research methods like participant observation are inevitable. However, participant observation is, at best, secondary in the literature on qualitative research in the sociolegal discipline, while there is no guidance on how to conduct this technique whatsoever.Therefore, this article is written with two audiences in mind: It should serve as a useful reference and guide for those who teach qualitative research methods in legal education and who are looking to enhance their knowledge and skills concerning participant observation; it is also meant to serve as a basic primer for the beginning sociolegal researcher who is about to become a participating observer for the first time.


Marc A. Simon Thomas
Utrecht University, School of Law, Institute of Jurisprudence, Constitutional and Administrative Law, Legal Theory; m.a.simonthomas@uu.nl.