COURSE MANUAL

Research Methods

LL.M., Fall Semester, 2019-20

Instructor/s

Dr. Prabhakar Singh

PhD (Singapore) LLM (Barcelona) BALLB (Bhopal)
Associate Professor
Jindal Global Law School

Email: prabhakar@jgu.edu.in
 CONTENTS

PART I
General Information………………………………………………………………………………Page

PART II

a. Course Description…………………………………………………………………………………Page

b. Course Aims……………………………………………………………………………………..Page

c. Intended Leaning Outcomes ……………………………………………………...........Page

d. Grading of Student Achievement………………………………………………….......Page

PART III
a. Keyword Syllabus……………………………………………………………………………Page
b. Course Policies………………………………………………………………………………..Page

PART IV

a. Weekly Course Outline ………………………………………………………….............Page

b. Readings…………………………………………………………………………………………Page
 PART II

a. Course Description

Research method(s) is an important subject for higher education in law. The Bar Council of
India (BCI) mandates that LLM students be taught various methods for reading and writing
law. To be sure, research methods are part of BALLB and LLB courses too. What is then the
difference between undergraduate and post-graduate courses on research methods? First, for
the uninitiated, LLM classes on research methods might be their first ever encounter with
methods of law with a view to writing a thesis. Second, for those who have had some exposure
to the debate on and about research methods on law, the LLM studies offers a definitive and
compulsory education on law methods.

The University Grants Commission’s Guidelines of 2013 for establishing 1 year LLM
course mandates that teachers offer courses “keeping in view that they are not just improved
version of those of subjects already studied at graduate level. The curriculum shall be
continuously updated.” In what follows, I offer a detailed and engaging course on research
methods. From the obvious common law method of writing and thinking, I offer insights into
the judicial mind using law and economics, law and literature and socio-legal methods. This
comprehensive course takes the students through life and work of law-reading and, then,
writing.

b. Course Aims

The course on research methods aims to equip LLM students to decode legal texts. With a
series of interventions, professors Bhattacharya and Singh would initiate students into reading
a legal text with a view to understand its implicit method. Of course, legal text are often
penned with a conclusion in mind. Yet an organic piece of legal writing ensures that the
defence of a position is not crude or unsophisticated. Nevertheless, there are also legal texts
that allow an honest writing to reach its logical conclusion, with no predetermined conclusion
in mind.

This neatly divides a legal text into court-text and meta-court text. While the former type
includes texts that are produced for the court by judges and lawyers, the latter include a ream
of scholarship on law addressing extra-legal audience. This course fosters no discrimination
between the two kinds of texts. We aim to stitch together both kinds of texts for an organic
but rigorous study of legal research method. Moreover, we aim to cover both public law and
private law for its methods of writing and research. Our ultimate aim is to make a candidate
self-aware of her own methods when writing her LLM thesis or any other paper. In other
words, we aim teach our students to never pen a method-less writing.

c. Intended Learning Outcomes

 Course Intended Weightage Teaching and Assessment Tasks/
Learning Outcomes Learning Activities Activities

By the end of the course, students

should be able to:
Class Participation 20 %
Class Presentation 10 %
Written Response 20 %
(600 words)
End Term 50%

d. Grading of Student Achievement

To pass this course, students must obtain a minimum of 50% in the

cumulative aspects of coursework, e.g. moot, and final examination. End of
semester exam will carry 50 marks out of which students have to obtain a
minimum of 15 marks to fulfil the requirement of passing the course.

The details of the grades as well as the criteria for awarding such grades are provided
below.

Letter Percentage Grade Definitions

Grade Of marks
O 80% and above Outstanding Outstanding work
with strong evidence
of knowledge of the
subject matter,
excellent
organizational
capacity, ability to
synthesize and
critically analyse and
originality in
thinking and
presentation.
A+ 75 to 79.75% Excellent Sound knowledge of
the subject matter,
thorough
understanding of
issues; ability to
synthesize critically
and analyse
A 70 to 74.75% Good Good understanding
of the subject
matter, ability to
identify issues and
provide balanced
solutions to
 problems and good
critical and
analytical skills.
A- 65 to 69.75% Adequate Adequate knowledge
of the subject matter
to go to the next
level of study and
reasonable critical
and analytical skills.
B+ 60 to 64.75% Marginal Limited knowledge
of the subject
matter, irrelevant
use of materials and
poor critical and
analytical skills.
B 55 to 59.75% Poor Poor comprehension
of the subject
matter; poor critical
and analytical skills
and marginal use of
the relevant
materials.
B- 50 to 54.75% Pass “Pass” in a pass-fail
course. “P”
indicative of at least
the basic
understanding of the
subject matter.
F Below 50% Fail Fails in the subject

PART IV

a. Weekly Course Outline

Week 1 What is Research? Why method?

Week 2 Finding Method while reading: PART 1: Books

Week 3 Finding Method while reading. PART 2: Articles

Week 4 Finding Method while reading. PART 3: cases

Week 5 Finding Method while reading. PART 3: book reviews

Week 6 Finding Methods while Writing: Part 1: What is my question?

Week 7 Finding Methods while Writing: Part 2: Stepping into various shoes

Finding Methods while Writing: Part 3: Writing as a Lawyer, Judge

Week 8 and a scholar

Week 9 Writing on Private Law: Law of contracts, Law of Torts

Week 10 Writing on Private Law: Doctrinal Methods

Week 11 Writing on Public Law: Doctrinal Method

Week 12 Writing on Public Law: Theoretical Method

Week 13 Using historical method for public and private law.

Week 14 The miscellaneous methods

Week 15 Revision and reflection

b. Readings
Books

1. Mike McConville & Wing Hong (Eric) Chui, Research Methods for
Law, 2nd edn (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).

Articles

1. Bhattacharya, Shilpi, The Desire for Whiteness: Can Law and Economics Explain it? 2
Columbia Journal of Race & Law (2011) 117.
2. Dalwai, Sameena, Dance Bar Ban: Doing A Feminist Legal Ethnography, 12(1) Socio
Legal Review (2016) 1.
 3. De, Rohit, A Peripatetic World Court” Cosmopolitan Courts, Nationalist Judges and
the Indian Appeal to the Privy Council’, 32 Law & History Review (2014) pp. 821-851.
4. Dworkin, Ronald, Hard cases, 88 Harvard Law Review (1975), pp. 1057-1109.
5. Dworkin, Ronald, In Praise of Theory, 29 Arizona State Law Journal (1997) 353.
6. Ghosh, Amitabh, The March of the Novel Through History: The testimony of my
Grandfather’s Bookcase, in, Ghosh (ed) The Imam and the Indian (Ravi Dayal Publisher,
Delhi, 2002) pp. 287-304.
7. Kennedy, Duncan, Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, 89 Harvard Law
Review (1985) 1685.
8. Nouwen, Sarah, “As you set out for Ithaka” Practical, Epistemological, Ethical, and
Existential questions about socio-legal empirical research in conflict, 27 Leiden Journal of
International Law (2014) pp. 227-260.
9. Orford, Anne, In Praise of Description, 25 Leiden Journal of International Law (2012), 609-
625.
10. Pound, Roscoe, Public Law and Private Law, 24 Cornell L. Rev. (1939) 469.
11. Schiff, David, Socio-Legal Theory: Social Structure and Law, Modern Law Review, vol.
39, no. 3, 1976, pp. 287–310.
12. Singh, Prabhakar, Spinning Yarns from Moonbeams: A Jurisprudence of Statutory
Interpretation in Common Law, 41 Statute Law Review (2019).
13. Swaminathan, Shiv, Dicey and the Brick Maker: An Unresolved Tension Between the
Rational and the Reasonable in Common Law Pedagogy, 40 Liverpool Law Review
(2019).
14. Tyler, Tom, Methodology in Legal Research, 12 Utrecht Law Review (2017) 130.
15. Wolfgang Alschner, Damien Charlotin, The Growing Complexity of the International
Court of Justice’s Self-Citation Network, 29 European Journal of International Law (2018)
pp. 83–112.

Cases

1. Rylands v Fletcher [1868] UKHL 1.

2. Shankar Sharan v Jawahar Lal Nehru University and Others, 1998 Indlaw DEL 481.
3. Pavitra and others v Union of India and others, 2019 Indlaw SC 576 [para. 97-100].
4. Jacobson & Sons Ltd v Globe Ltd, [2008] EWHC 88 (Ch) [ On survey methodology]
5. R. (on the application of British American Tobacco UK Ltd) v Secretary of State for Health, [2016]
EWHC 1169 (Admin) [ economic analysis].

Report

Law Commission of India, Need to Regulate Pet Shops and Dog and Aquarium Fish Breeding,
report no 261 (August 2015).