Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Methodology

  • Weichie

Some Thoughts on Case Law Selection and Why it Is OK to Make Mistakes (as Long as You Learn from Them)

September 04, 2015

By Stijn Smet In this post, I aim to make two fairly straightforward points. First: methodology is crucial in any type of (academic) research. This is obviously the case for legal research as well, even if legal scholars have traditionally been less concerned with methodological questions than scholars in most other disciplines (I am painting […]

  • Lourdes Peroni

Selecting Analytical Frameworks Across Disciplinary Boundaries

September 02, 2015

Lourdes Peroni In sharing my experience with methodological issues during my Ph.D., I would like to focus on the aspects I considered essential when selecting the frameworks that informed my case law analysis. In what follows, I outline the main criteria I used to select some of these frameworks and then zoom in on the […]

  • Guest Blogger

Selecting Landmark Cases

August 28, 2015

By Laura Van den Eynde, Research Fellow (F.N.R.S.) at the Center for Public Law – Université libre de Bruxelles. Laura’s Ph.D. research focuses on the relationships between human rights NGOs and jurisdictions and the influences these organizations have on judicial dialogue. This post aims at discussing a question related to case selection when conducting research. […]

  • Guest Blogger

Examining Strasbourg case law and judicial behavior: a view across disciplines

August 26, 2015

By Dorothea Staes, PhD researcher at ULB and USL on the European Court on Human Rights’ references to external normative instruments to interpret the ECHR. Legal scholars repeatedly struggle with and are criticized for methodological aspects of research design, not least when undertaking case law studies. A holistic approach to judicial decision-making – introducing extrajudicial […]

  • Weichie

Blog post series: legal research methodologies to deal with case law from Strasbourg (and beyond)

August 25, 2015

This post was written by Valeska David, Helena De Vylder and Eline Kindt, doctoral researchers at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and members of the inter-university Human Rights Integration project. We are used to discuss and analyse the Strasbourg Court’s case law. We share our thoughts and findings in blogposts, papers and even […]