Year: 2017
Type: review
Abstract: Legal scholars, lawyers, and judges frequently make positive claims about the state of legal doctrine.Yet despite the profligate citation norms of legal writing, these claims are often supported in a somewhat imprecise way -where the exact evidence is unclear or difficult for others to probe or falsify.In response to similar issues, other disciplines have developed methodological standards for conducting "systematic reviews" that summarizes the state of knowledge on a given subject.In this essay we argue that methods for performing systematic reviews that are specifically tailored to legal analysis should be developed.We purpose a simple four-step process that could be used whenever someone is trying to make objective claims about the state of legal doctrine and illustrate the value of method by applying it to doctrinal claims that have been made in recent legal scholarship.
Source: eYLS (Yale Law School)
Authors: William Baude, Adam Chilton, Anup Malani
Institution: University of Chicago
Language: English
Topic: Legal Studies and Policies
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2485248672