 interrogating national systems to have regard to wider considerations than was possible when the world was considerably larger and less easily navigated.
Additionally, the teaching of law has moved decisively a way from a teachingfocused system of rote learning tested through examinations to a learning environment in which students are encouraged to assume more responsibility for their own education and in which research tested through coursework assignments plays a more prominent role. Law students are now more research-based than ever before, and research is an integral part of the undergraduate curriculum, no longer the preserve of postgraduate students. This means, at the least, that legal research and scholarship is much more pervasive, complex and demanding than ever before and those engaging in research have more possible pathways to travel and require a greater range of skills and competences than their law-focused predecessors.
increasing influence of international and supra-national legal materials, and the increasing need for legal scholars to refer to materials from a variety of jurisdictions, together with the demands made by contemporary law schools upon their students to engage in critical thinking. This type of research crosses traditional categories of law, integrating public and private international law with domestic law, European law and the comparative method. It aims to facilitate our understanding of the operation of international law and legal systems and its impact on the formulation of public policy in an era of global interdependence.
as ‘globalisation’ and the new post-Cold War threats to international peace and security. The methodologies for scholarship in this field are unavoidably shaped by the nature of International Law’s ‘sources’, which lawyers from other fields frequently find to be notably idiosyncratic. This feature of International Law’s sources results from the fact that they emerge unavoidably from the decentralised and mainly consensual nature of the international legal system. This chapter looks at each of these sources with a view to identifying methodological pitfalls into which inexperienced researchers sometimes fall and the means of avoiding them. It also identifies a non-exhaustive range of broad topics which provide potential for young researchers looking for a fertile area to explore. The final chapter reviews a thirty-year-long project as it evolved and metamorphosed to bring out many of the threads linking the other contributions and to provide a guide to the challenges and possibilities of legal research. Mike McConville reviews a variety of approaches that may be taken in undertaking research illustrating basic principles with worked examples. Taking the issue of negotiated justice, the chapter traces the evolution in approach from ‘revelatory’ research to meta-theory grounded in detailed data collection. The narrative picks up issues in the chapters and looks at comparativism, ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ theory building, issues of access, assimilation and researcher identity, as well as the ethics and politics of research.
  Doctrinal Research C. M. Bast and M. Hawkins, Foundations of Legal Research and Writing (rd edn) (Clifton Park, NY: Thomson/Delmar Learning, ). C. Chatterjee, Methods of Research in Law (nd edn) (Horsmonden, Kent: Old Bailey Press, ). P. Clinch, Using a Law Library: A Student’s Guide to Legal Research Skills (nd edn) (London: Blackstone, ). G. Holburn, Butterworths Legal Research (nd edn) (London: Butterworths, ). W. H. Putman, Legal Research, Analysis, and Writing (Clifton Park, NY: Thomson/Delmar Learning, ). D. Stott, Legal Research (nd edn) (London: Cavendish Publishing, ). Empirical Legal Scholarship C. Bell, ‘A Note on Participant Observation’ ()  Sociology .
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