Paper Titles & Abstracts

What does it mean to work in the area of law and politics? In the legal science the methods debate as returned to centre stage over the last few years - whilst political scientists are smugly proud of their methodological superiority. But is it enough to apply political science methods to legal problems and legal methods to political questions? This paper considers the question if the area of law and politics is in need of a methodological think. It recognises that law and politics are two different beasts and asks the question if, even though they share the same habitat, we are blinded by their obvious commonalities to their glaring differences. As a political scientists we often ignore case law as read by a lawyer, a legal scientist often avoids the mere mention of theory. This paper will therefore address three question: What does it mean to do research in the area of law and politics? It will do so by looking at the difficulties research in the area of law and politics faces from a legal, a politics and a "law and politics" perspective. In particular I will analyse the and highlight the areas in which our approached differ and we therefore need to recognise our own and the other fields advantages as well as shortcomings.It argues that, to do research in the area of law and politics we need to be more sensitive to the methodological and theoretical aspects of the "other" field to produce more complete research. As such this paper gives an analysis of the methodological problems faced by the study of law and politics. It also gives some suggestions where we have to start recognising the "other side" in order to allow for valid research that can account for both law and politics.