Quality, methodology, and politics in doctrinal legal scholarship

Doctrinal legal scholarship is the oldest form of academic legal research but the quality criteria and methodological ground rules for this type of research have always remained rather implicit. This is increasingly problematic in a ‘post-truth era’ in which academic research is being put under a magnifying glass. Although it is certainly not impossible to make the quality standards more explicit and to require a higher degree of methodological accountability, this is unlikely to happen in the short run because of certain politics in legal academia. These feed the fear of many law school managers to distance legal scholarship too much from legal practice because that may hurt the future prospects of their law students. At the same time, though, law schools need to worry about the fact that not making the quality standards and methodology of doctrinal research more explicit could make legal scholars lose credibility towards other academic disciplines and the larger public.