Methodologies of law as performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the growth in scholarship in the broad field of law as performance, there is little critical attention paid to methodologies of research. With attention to the growing research in this field, this paper shall consider methodological approaches to law as performance. This paper considers how traditional qualitative methodologies, such as ethnographic observations, case studies and comparative analysis, are used in law as performance studies. The paper then goes on to consider different methodologies, such as narrative, story-telling and also performance- or practice-led research, which position the legal researcher as practitioner and are under-utilized within legal research. There are difficulties posed by these new methodologies, including framing research questions, demonstrating generalizable claims, and dealing with the subjectivity of analysis. The paper considers how performance practitioners have overcome these difficulties to create performance-led research that yields new understandings, and how these approaches could be brought to bear on the performance of law.