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Selected research methods for lawyers (Law and Legal Texts) (LAW-DS-REMET-22)

LAW-DS-REMET-22

Description

Aim: To equip 2^nd and 3^rd year law researchers with the tools and methods that are particularly suited for the interdisciplinary study or law and institutions.

The workshop in fall 2022 will focus on law and language.

Seminar design and learning outcome: The general idea of the seminar is to give researchers an overview of and the guidance in selecting (primarily) qualitative methodology, which fits their research question and interest. They begin to engage with the research tools, using their own materials or materials prepared by the lecturer.

Schedule & Format: Interactive lectures and assignments (with individual or group feedback from the lecturer).

• There might be an option to follow the seminar online
• The seminar is especially suited for 2^nd and 3^rd year researchers with a clearly defined research question, a good command of their research field (existing literature) and sources (data).

Seminar description (by day):
Due to the increased availability of textual data and the proliferation of computational tools to analyze it, we have witnessed a clear shift from qualitative to quantitative methods of text analysis in recent decades. The seminar will begin by discussing most recent developments and quantitative methods of text analysis, before narrowing its focus on the promise of classification methods. In their assignment the participants will get hands-on experience in trying out (some of) these methods and reflect on their promise and pitfalls in their own research.
On the second day the participants will discuss their assignment and discuss some of the pitfalls of classification methods thereby offering a bridge into the promise held by corpus methods. The participants will be presented with key concepts and recent research employing corpus methods. In their assignment participants will get hands-on experience trying out corpus methods and reflect on their promise and pitfalls in their own research.
The third day will take outset in a discussion on the second assignment, before turning to a discussion on the promise of qualitative methods of text analysis. The seminar will round off by circling back to where it started and discuss the promise of qualitative methods of text analysis and the epistemology of the linguistic approach. It will address questions such as: what can we learn about the law by studying the language of law, and how is the study of language different from the legal analysis of language.

Proposed schedule: 

Day 1 w/ Zuzanna Godzimirska
Morning: Introduction & classification methods
Afternoon: Assignment on classification methods

Day 2 w/ Zuzanna Godzimirska & Anne Lise Kjær
Morning: Assignment debrief & corpus methods
Afternoon: Assignment on corpus methods 

Day 3 w/ Anne Lise Kjær
Morning: Assignment debrief & qualitative text analysis and the epistemology of the linguistic approach

NB! The morning lectures will take approximately 2 hours each. The afternoon assignments will require 2 - 3 hours each. 

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