Project Workshop Overview

Doing Law Beyond the State:
Research Methodologies in Comparative, EU and Public and Private International Law

An initial, “scoping workshop” brings together established and early-career scholars to have a “cross-generation” and cross-specialisation dialogue. We will adopt a ‘what have we learned?’ approach, considering how the growing interest in method and importance of theory among traditional approaches to legal scholarship has important impacts on the academy and on legal practice. We have asked participants to frame their papers around the workshop themes:

Workshop Themes

• Learning from experience: what is/should be the role of the international/EU academic lawyer? What do recent crises (economic, military, etc.) reveal about previous disciplinary assumptions? How should we respond to the critical challenge? What do older debates have to tell us about contemporary problems (e.g. does the monism and dualism debate have any contemporary relevance in the light of the fragmentation of international law/relationship between legal orders)? How have methodological innovations in our disciplines changed over time?

• Learning from each other: How should European and international lawyers talk to each other? What can we learn from our shared legal cultures? What role for comparative method in public international law? What can private international law teach European and international public lawyers about normative coherence versus dissonance?

• Learning from outside: What can international and EU lawyers learn from other disciplines? What should they learn? Does interdisciplinarity undermine legal autonomy?