Journal of the Charles University Law Faculty
Gor Vartazaryan, Filip Horák, Jakub Dienstbier a Filip Jelínek
Author’s affiliation:
Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague
Doctrine or Empiricism? Methodology, Ethics, and Funding of Czech Legal Research
Jurisprudence 4-5/2025 Section: Articles Page: 48-60
DOI: https://doi.org/10.71372/EGRZ5774
Keywords: Legal science, legal research, legal theory, jurisprudence, legal doctrine, empirical legal research, methodology, research ethics, research funding.
Abstract: This paper addresses the current challenges of Czech legal research, specifically in four areas: 1) the lack of clarity as to which activities should be regarded as legal research, how to label and categorize them, and what basic standards to apply; 2) the absence of a well-developed system for both internal and external quality control of research outputs; 3) related ethical issues arising in legal research; and 4) insufficient and uneven research funding, which, among other consequences, hampers the work of full-time academics. Furthermore, we sketch a new typology of legal research, distinguishing three subcategories based on research objectives: legal scholarship, scientific legal theory, and empirical legal research. We use this framework to outline partial solutions to the aforementioned problems.
