Doctrinal and Non-Doctrinal Research

Research is the careful and systematic investigation and consideration of study regarding a particular concern or research problem using scientific methods. Research can also be considered as the process of discovering new knowledge. This knowledge can be either the development of new concepts or the advancement of existing knowledge and theories, leading to a new understanding that was not previously known. According to the American sociologist Earl Robert Babbie, “research is a systematic inquiry to describe, explain, predict, and control the observed phenomenon. It involves inductive and deductive methods.” Inductive methods analyze an observed event, while deductive methods verify the observed event. Inductive approaches are associated with qualitative research, and deductive methods are more commonly associated with quantitative analysis. While research can be carried out by anyone and in any field, most research is usually done to broaden knowledge in the physical, biological, and social worlds. In this article we shall study doctrinal research and non-doctrinal research, their purposes, merits and demerits..

The phrase ‘systematic investigation’ represents how research is normally conducted – a hypothesis is formed, appropriate research methods are designed, data is collected and analysed, and research results are summarised into one or more ‘research conclusions’. These research conclusions are then shared with the rest of the scientific community to add to the existing knowledge and serve as evidence to form additional questions that can be investigated. It is this cyclical process that enables scientific research to make continuous progress over the years; the true purpose of research.

Legal Research:

Legal research involves systematic examination of problems relating to law within appropriate methodological framework. It deals with study of different aspects of law such as principles, theories, process, historical development, comparative status, functioning of judiciary, justice delivery, among others. The systematic investigation of problems and of matters concerned with law such as codes, acts etc. is legal research. Judges, lawyers, Law Commissions and researchers constantly do research in law. Moreover, legal researcher can even go beyond the pure legal issues to study practical problems of the outer world in relation to law. Legal research can be broadly classified as doctrinal and non-doctrinal legal research on the basis of focus of the study – whether it examines theoretical and analytical aspects of ‘law as it is’ or it observes relevant social facts interrelated with law.

Doctrinal Research:

The word ‘doctrine’ is derived from the Latin word ‘doctrina’ which means to instruct, a lesson, a percept.

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.”

Doctrinal research is a research methodology that focuses on analyzing and interpreting legal documents, such as statutes, case law, regulations, and treaties, in understanding legal concepts, principles, and doctrines. It has its jurisprudential root on the positive or analytical school of law. It is epistemologically oriented and will focus on case-law, statutes and other legal sources. It differs from other methodologies in that it looks at the law within itself; a pure doctrinal approach makes no attempt to look at the effect of the law or how it is applied, but instead examines law as a written body of principles which can be discerned and analysed using only legal sources. Thus, doctrinal legal research is knowledge-based research in law rather than research about law. Judges, Lawyers, academicians, all are engaged in this kind of research.

Purpose of Doctrinal Legal Research:

• To construct new legal theories, principles and doctrines, to test them and add new knowledge in the legal scholarship.
• To help maintain continuity, consistency and certainty of law.
• To resolve day-to-day client matters as it is more manageable and outcomes are more predictable due to its focus on established sources.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

Characteristics of Doctrinal Research:

The distinctive characteristics of doctrinal legal research can be listed as follows:

• Doctrinal legal research is legal propositions based study.
• Conventional legal theory, law, statutory materials and court decisions report are the sources for doctrinal legal research.
• It studies the law as it exists and not concerned about how it should be or even do not seek public opinion about how it should be.
• It is research in law not research about law.
• It is distinguished from literature review, content analysis or historical legal research. And
• The bulk of legal research is a product of this approach.

Methodology of Doctrinal Research:

Doctrinal research is library-based or theoretical research and is the most common methodology employed by those undertaking research in law. It is concerned with the analysis of the legal doctrine and how it was developed and applied. It consists of either simple research aimed at finding a specific statement of the law, or it is legal analysis with more complex logic and depth. The methodology of doctrinal research involves several steps:

• Identification of Research Problem: This involves defining the research problem or question and clarifying the scope of the research. For example, an investigation can be conducted to find specific legislation that monitors occurrences of child abuse in a particular jurisdiction.
• Collection of Legal Sources: The next step is to gather relevant legal sources such as statutes, regulations, case law, and legal treatises. This stage often involves a great deal of background reading on a subject using sources such as dictionaries, encyclopaedias, major textbooks, treatises, and journals that are accompanied by footnotes. The process of finding relevant sources in contemporary doctrinal legal research may prove to be very difficult. The growing number of (digitalized) national and international results in an almost infinite sea of information. Hence, it is therefore often impossible to oversee all possible relevant sources related to a specific legal problem.
• Evaluation of Legal Sources: Once the legal sources have been collected, the researcher must evaluate them to determine their relevance, reliability, and credibility.
• Analysis of Legal Sources: After evaluating the legal sources, the researcher must analyze them to identify legal principles, concepts, and arguments.
• Synthesis of Legal Principles: The researcher must then synthesize the legal principles and concepts that have been identified through analysis, to form a coherent and logical understanding of the legal topic.
• Application of Legal Principles: Finally, the researcher must apply the legal principles and concepts that have been synthesized to the research problem or question, to arrive at a conclusion or recommendation. All inquiries will have specific answers to specific questions that can be easily found and verified, and these are the keys to doctrinal or library-based research.

Merits of Doctrinal Research Method:

• Foundation for Future Research: Doctrinal research provides a foundation for further research, as it helps researchers identify legal gaps, inconsistencies, and ambiguities. Thus, a strong doctrinal analysis will be the starting point for much legal research. In legal research, a doctrinal focus is often a good starting point, but a lot of legal research will need to take analysis further than a purely doctrinal approach. The insights of doctrinal research can be used to develop new legal theories, propose legal reforms, or conduct empirical research.
• Quick Answer to Legal Problem: Doctrinal research provides quick answers to the practical problems at hand by analyzing the legal principles, concepts and doctrines. Thereby serving as a ready reference to people who didn’t have time at their disposal to undertake that research by themselves. It helps in incrimination of legal knowledge base. 6. Future direction of the law can be predicted on the basis of such studies.
• Helps in Development of Law: It offers a logical explanation to the law and at the same time also highlights inconsistencies and uncertainties in the law. It reveals gaps ambiguities and inconsistencies in the law. It lay down a roadmap to develop the law by avoiding the pitfalls. Judges have over time developed law from their deep knowledge and investigation into the field. Law of torts is one great example as it is a “judge-made law”.
• Easier Method: 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 will focus on the techniques used at the time, to initiate research at the graduation level. Doctrinal research represents a “base” in the legal community and most universities demand an even higher degree of work based on this ideological framework.
• Cost Effective: Doctrinal research is a cost-effective research methodology, as it does not require extensive data collection or empirical analysis. Researchers can access legal documents online or in libraries, and analyze them using legal research tools and methodologies.
• Time Efficient: Doctrinal research is a time-efficient research methodology, as legal documents are readily available and can be analyzed quickly. Researchers can also use legal research tools and methodologies to streamline the research process and save time.
• Easily Manageable: 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 surprises.
• Professional Development: Doctrinal research can help legal professionals, such as lawyers, judges, and scholars, enhance their knowledge and skills in a particular legal field. It enables them to develop a deeper understanding of legal concepts, principles, and doctrines, and apply them to real-world legal problems.

Demerits of Doctrinal Research:

• Theoretical Method: it is highly theoretical and technical, uncritical, conservative, trivial and without due consideration of the social, economic and political importance of the legal process. It is primarily focused on analyzing existing legal sources and interpreting legal decisions. As a result, it may lack originality and creativity compared to other research methodologies.
• Subjective in Nature: It can be subjective and suffer from the vice of perception of the researcher about the enquired subject matter. Therefore another person can reach upon an entirely different dimension to the same question.
• No Empirical Support: The doctrinal research is often criticised for being disconnected with reality. It does not involve the collection of empirical data, such as surveys or interviews, which can provide insight into the impact of legal rules and practices on individuals and society. The law does not operate in a vacuum. It works within the community and impacts on the community. Thus, it is devoid of any support from social facts. Therefore his projection might be far off the social reality. This is a serious concern as law can act as an instrument of social transformation.
• Possibility of Bias: Doctrinal research relies heavily on legal sources, which can be biased towards a particular interpretation of the law. This can lead to a limited or one-sided analysis of legal issues.
• It may not be Updated: It neglects the factors that lie outside the strict brackets of law, which might have a bearing upon the legal principle, theory or doctrine. For example, the recent amendment in the criminal law regarding rape, wherein a huge public outcry was an extra-legal factor that shaped the law.
• Limited Scope: Doctrinal research is limited to the study of legal sources, which may not provide a comprehensive understanding of a particular legal issue. It may overlook non-legal factors that can affect legal outcomes.

Non-Doctrinal Research:

Non-doctrinal research, also known as social-legal research, is research that employs methods taken from other disciplines to generate empirical data that answers research questions. It can be a problem, policy, or a reform of the existing law. It is a multidisciplinary field of inquiry that explores the intersection between law and society. Socio-legal research is a methodology that combines social science and legal principles to study the interaction between law and society. It involves the use of empirical methods to analyze legal institutions, practices, and policies within their social context.

Purposes of Non-Doctrinal Research:

• To organize 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
• To trace the consequences of the outcome or legal decision making in terms of values, gains and deprivation of litigants, on litigants and non –legal institutions
• To access the impact of non–legal events e.g.. economic development, growth of knowledge, technical changes upon legal decisions
• To identify and appraise the magnitude of variable factors influencing the outcome of legal decision making e.g. the effect of capital punishment on the prevalence of dangerous crime at a given place at a given time
• To easily trace out the actual consequence of any legal principles on the society or co-relation between law and other non-legal fact
• To study the impact of legal principles upon non legal events, which may be social, political, economic, technology, and scientific, cyber world. The scope of empirical research is much broader than doctrinal research, and its basis source of knowledge are

Methodology of Non-Doctrinal Research:

• Identification of Research Problem: This involves defining the research problem or question and clarifying the scope of the research. For example, an investigation can be conducted to find specific legislation that monitors occurrences of child abuse in a particular jurisdiction.
• Collection of Data: Data collection is the process of gathering and measuring information on variables of interest, in an established systematic fashion that enables one to answer stated research questions, test hypotheses, and evaluate outcomes. The data collection component of research is common to all fields of study including physical and social sciences, humanities, business, etc. While methods vary by discipline, the emphasis on ensuring accurate and honest collection remains the same. Interviews with the persons under consideration, lawyers, judges, and other legal professionals; focus groups with community organizations and advocacy groups; participant observation at court hearings and other legal proceedings helps in collecting data.
• Classification of Data: The method of arranging data into homogeneous classes according to the common features present in the data is known as classification. The aim of classification is to consolidate the volume of data in such a way that similarities and differences can be quickly understood. Figures can consequently be ordered in sections with common traits.
• Analysis of Data: Research data analysis is a process used by researchers to reduce data to a story and interpret it to derive insights. The data analysis process helps reduce a large chunk of data into smaller fragments, which makes sense.
• Findings: It describes what the researcher found when they analyzed their data. Its primary purpose is to use the data collected to answer the research question posed in the introduction, even if the findings challenge the hypothesis.
• Conclusions: The study may conclude that there is a need for reform in the legal system to address the needs and rights of communities and that greater attention should be paid to how social factors influence legal outcomes.

Merits of Non-Doctrinal Research:

• It highlights the ‘gaps’ between ‘legislative goals’ and ‘social reality’ and thereby ‘depict’ a ‘true picture’ of’ that ‘law-in-action.
• It assesses ‘role and contribution of law’ in bringing the intended social consequences. It highlights the ‘factors have been creating ‘impediments’ or posing ‘problems’ for the law in attaining its ‘goal(s)’.
• It provides an ‘expert advice’ and gives significant feedback to the policy-makers, Legislature, and Judges for better formulation, enforcement and interpretation of the law.

Demerits of Non-Doctrinal Research:

• Time Consuming and Costly: It is extremely time consuming and costly. It calls for additional training in designing and employing tools of data collection and entails greater commitments of time and energy to produce meaningful results.
• Need of Strong Base of Doctrinal Research: It needs a strong base of doctrinal legal research. A legal scholar who is weak in doctrinal legal research cannot handle non-doctrinal legal research in a meaningful way.
• Special Training Required: The basic tools of data collection are not simple to employ. They require specialized knowledge, training and skill from the stage of planning to execution. Law students are not adequately trained in the techniques of empirical research.
• Results are Not Instant: It is extremely weak in solving a problem in hand. It cannot give a direction as to what course the law should follow to be useful.
• Personal Issues: The law students lack a tradition sustaining non-doctrinal research. They cannot recognize their findings. Law researchers are obsessively preoccupied with the teaching function and their arm chair doctrinal research for the purpose of publication from promotions and enhance their income.
• There is lack of adequate financial support
• It cannot remain unaffected from human vices, upbringing and thinking because acceptance of a new system of law in India depends on many factors, such as awareness, value, capability and pattern of adaptation.

Distinguishing Between Doctrinal Research and Non-Doctrinal Research:

Conclusion:

In conclusion, we can say that it is easy to target a specific 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. 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. Thus, postgraduate scholars would do well to equip themselves by using alternative research methodologies.