Giulia Gentile (University of Essex) has posted Research Method(s) in EU law: Some Critical Reflections and an Untold Story (in Jan Zglinski, Urska Sadl and Daniel Naurin (eds), Empirical Legal Studies in EU Law (CUP, forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Since its inception, EU legal scholarship has contributed to the construction of the EU legal order as we know it. The references to academic works in Advocates General's opinions are testament to the cooperation between academia and EU institutions. The focus of EU law scholars on the EU Court of Justice has driven a type of EU law scholarship chiefly doctrinal. Yet, under the influence of American legal scholarship, empirical methods have started colonising EU legal research. Empirical approaches have enriched EU doctrinal works and unveiled under-explored aspects of the EU functioning. The 'competition' between doctrinal and empirical within EU law scholarship thus started. To solve the methodological impasse, cooperation between methods would seem the most sensible approach in view of higher epistemological gains. However, this chapter demonstrates that methodological synergy may not solve the challenge of identifying the most comprehensive and accurate research method to study EU law so easily. It does so by offering critical reflections on the epistemological limits of empirical doctrinal methods, and a novel perspective on the empirical underpinnings of EU legal doctrinal scholarship. Ultimately, the chapter invites EU law scholars to adopt methodological modesty, as the boundaries between methods may not be as clear-cut as one would think, especially in EU law research.
