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84 U. Chi. L. Rev. 213 (2017)
Qualitative Methods for Law Review Writing

handle is hein.journals/uclr84 and id is 219 raw text is: Qualitative Methods for Law Review Writing Katerina Linost & Melissa Carlsontt Typical law review articles not only clarify what the law is, but also examine the history of the current rules, assess the status quo, and present reform proposals. To make theoretical arguments more plausible, legal scholars frequently use ex- amples: they draw on cases, statutes, political debates, and other sources. But legal scholars often pick their examples unsystematically and explore them armed with only the tools for doctrinal analysis. Unsystematically chosen examples can help develop plausible theories, but they rarely suffice to convince readers that these theories are true, especially when plausible alternative explanations exist. This project presents methodological insights from multiple social science disciplines and from history that could strengthen legal scholarship by improving research design, case selection, and case analysis. We describe qualitative techniques rarely found in law review writing, such as process tracing, theoretically informed sam- pling, and most similar case design, among others. We provide examples of best practice and illustrate how each technique can be adapted for legal sources and arguments. INTRODUCTION For over a century, American legal scholars have participated in the realist project, understanding law not as an autonomous, independent system of rules, akin to geometry, but as the prod- uct of heated political, economic, and societal conflicts.' When interpreting and evaluating the law, American legal scholars rarely limit themselves to doctrinal analysis of legal texts; they draw on diverse historical and contemporary examples to make theoretical claims more plausible. Legal scholars, however, do not usually approach this exercise as an empirical one. Indeed, legal academics often assume empirical techniques are useful only for statistical analyses. t Professor of Law and Faculty Co-director, Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. ft PhD Student, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. We are extremely grateful to Catherine Albiston, Lauren Edelman, Stavros Gadinis, David Lieberman, Aila Matanock, Alison Post, Kevin Quinn, Karen Tani, and partici- pants at the Berkeley Law Faculty Workshop for their generous comments. 1 See William W. Fisher III, Morton J. Horwitz, and Thomas A. Reed, eds, Ameri- can Legal Realism 232-33 (Oxford 1993). 213

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