European New Legal Realism and the Empirical Turn in Legal Scholarship

This project’s aim is twofold: first, it studies the ongoing empirical turn in legal scholarship, focusing especially on legal scholarship of international law; and second, it explores the prospects of providing theoretical foundations of an empirical basic science of international law under the banner of European New Legal Realism (ENLR).

THE PROJECT IS CLOSED
Project period:  2019-2022

This project explores two distinct but closely related research areas. First, it studies the ongoing empirical turn in legal research. Increasingly, legal scholars – especially scholars of international law – seem to be turning away from traditional doctrinal scholarship of valid law and toward especially the social sciences including sociology, political science and computer science in the study of law and its institutions. This project pursues both a theoretical path aiming to develop taxonomical resources in order to better conceptualize the empirical in empirical studies of international law, and an empirical path aiming to map both the actual scope of empirical work in international law, and the factors driving and inhibiting such work.

Second, under the banner of European New Legal Realism (ENLR) this part of the project explores the prospects of providing viable theoretical foundations for an empirical basic science of international law. Drawing on theoretical insights from key European sociologists of law Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, and on main proponent of Scandinavian legal realism Alf Ross ENLR outlines a program for an empirical science of international law that is both related to but also in important respects differ from recent attempts to revive American Legal Realism.