Conducting Law and Society Research: Reflections on Methods and Practices

Through interviews with many of the most noteworthy authors in Law and Society, Conducting Law and Society Research takes students and scholars behind the scenes of empirical scholarship, showing the messy reality of research methods. The challenges and the uncertainties, so often missing from research methods textbooks, are revealed in candid detail. These accessible and revealing conversations about the lived reality of classic projects will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to those embarking on empirical research, ranging across the full array of disciplines that contribute to Law and Society. For all of the ambiguities and challenges to the social "scientific" study of law, the reflections found in this book - collectively capturing a portrait of the field through the window of the research efforts - individually remind readers that "good research" displays not an absence of problems, but the care taken in negotiating them.

Simon Halliday is currently Professor at the Law School of Strathclyde University and Conjoint Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of New South Wales. Patrick Schmidt is currently Associate Professor of Political Science at Macalester College.