Legal Research Tools and Methods in

Ethiopia

Wondemagegn Tadesse
1. Introduction
Like in any other discipline (science or profession), clarity on research methods is crucial
for the study of law and its institutions. From terminology to its very existence, the
subject of legal research methodology, which is mostly unheeded until recently, is
debated. Close to home, legal research methodology, despite its potential in shaping the
quality of legal scholarship, has not yet obtained sufficient clarity in the study of law.
From confusion of ‘legal research’ with the study of legal citations to lack of academics
interested in the area, legal research languishes in the shadows of substantive study of
law. Unlike in other disciplines where research methods are taken seriously – in some
cases being the very definition of the profession – law students, academicians, and
practitioners have largely ignored issues of research methods in Ethiopia.

Generally two problems of legal research could be identified in Ethiopia. The first relates
to the dearth of finding tools or law finders that are crucial in standard legal researches as
carried out for instance in writing legal memorandum or pleadings. It is common
knowledge among Ethiopian legal scholars that their doctrinal researches at present are
not assisted by systematic tools of locating the law. Although there were beginnings to
systematize the publication and the finding of Ethiopian laws such as the consolidation
efforts of the 1970’s, none of them resulted in permanent tools of legal research.
Moreover, there is little consensus among legal scholars on the importance of law finding
tools in Ethiopia. The second problem relates to the meaning and type of empirical legal
research methods that should be applied in empirical legal scholarship. The introduction
of a course on legal research methods, with recent reforms of law school curricula, might
be evidence of the growing recognition of empirical legal research methods in the study


LL.B (School of Law, AAU), LL.M (Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo),
PhD Student (Institute of International Law and International Relations, Karl-Franzens University of Graz);
Lecturer, Center for Human Rights, AAU (On Study Leave); also taught part-time at School of Law, AAU;
Email: twondemagegn@yahoo.com . I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers, who identified, among
others, major structural flaws of the initial draft and helped in the enhancement of coverage and
organization of the article. I am also indebted to students Rediate Mulugeta and Sousena Kebede of the
School of Law, who have assisted me in carrying out a general empirical survey used for this article. July
2012. Published in Journal of Ethiopian Law, Vol. XXV No. 2, September 2012.

1
and practice of law. But telling from the content and organization of the textbook1,
(empirical) legal research methods are more obscured than elaborated. While criticizing
the text is not the point of this article and as a matter of fact the text’s efforts have to be
acknowledged as pioneering empirical methods to Ethiopian law students, the textbook
provides little assistance for actual undertaking of empirical legal research owing to its
lack of clarity exemplified by ambiguities in terminologies and concepts of research
methods.

Such problems surrounding significance and meaning of legal research in Ethiopia

naturally call for exploration of the various issues of research methods, issues which will
hopefully be taken up for further research and action by students, practitioners, and
institutes of law. Hence exploration, it should be stated, is the objective of this article. As
in the nature of exploratory research, instead of providing concrete solutions, the article
aims at identifying issues concerning legal research in Ethiopia. In doing so, categories
and definitions of legal research are borrowed from literature. For the purpose of
comparison with other research methods, brief examination of doctrinal study and its
methods is made. Since finding tools in doctrinal research require special attention,
separate discussion of the topic is provided. Issues revolving around empirical legal
research are also discussed at length for they stir debates in legal scholarship. The article
also offers some clarification of terms “primary” and “secondary”, which might mean
different things based on the context in which they are used. After an outline of questions
of concern in legal research methods in Ethiopia, the article will remark on law schools
and legal methods including the issue of plagiarism, frequently encountered in term
papers and theses. After some observations on rules of citation, the article will end with
conclusions and recommendations to stakeholders in enriching legal research and in
effect legal scholarship in Ethiopia.

The initial story should be told. Sometime ago, the writer was looking for an article he
was told published in the Journal of Ethiopian Law (hereinafter JEL). The story did not
include the year and volume of JEL - the source was a faint memory of the article.
Naturally, the writer went to the Law Library (Addis Ababa University, hereinafter
AAU), wondering how to retrieve the article. He was all but unsure if there were indices
of JEL. The Library informed the writer that there was no index to JEL. What was then
the natural course for the writer, or anyone for that matter? Naturally colleagues teaching
the subject area should be of assistance but could not identify the article. The situation
was unfortunate not least the writer could not find the article – may be the article never
existed. But because there was and is no easy way of finding it: probably one had to start
from the first Volume, first Number of JEL, which would be how many decades back? Or
would it be a consolation if one knew that there are barely 25 volumes of JEL ever

1
Justice and Legal System Research Institute, Legal Research Methods: Teaching Material, (2009)

2
issued? But what struck the writer most was the wider picture: there was and still is no
easy way of finding Ethiopian law– laws, legal articles, and any legal research output.
And then the big question: should legal research tools such as finding tools, techniques,
and methods not help legal scholars with these and similar issues? Ideas with empirical
legal research forming part of this article came later.

Afterwards the writer consulted legal research materials and browsed books and
periodicals online. For lack of local materials, the writer has to substantially depend on
foreign materials accessible. The literature on legal research is rich, though as will be
clear later, with varying meanings of the concept. But what is inspiring is if one so
desired one can bite as much as one likes for legal research and scholarship in Ethiopia.
Compared to complex and functional legal tools and methods developed elsewhere, the
understanding and employment of legal research methods in Ethiopia are at their earliest.
It is not to say that by now the Ethiopian lawyer should have had Ethiopian versions of
Westlaw and LexisNexis. It is neither to suggest that the Ethiopian law student should
have had half of her studies in empirical legal research methods.

Regarding the situation of legal research methods in Ethiopia, the article relies on
personal observation of the writer and information gathered through conversations with
colleagues and students. Moreover, to corroborate these sources of information, a general
survey for the purpose of this article was carried out. The survey, the questions of which
are annexed in the end, focused on types of legal research common among scholars and
students of law, the use of law finders in doctrinal research, and methods applied to
empirical legal research. In the survey, which is carried out at the School of Law, AAU,
thirty-six research reports are investigated in terms of research tools and methods.
Sixteen are articles published in JEL and twenty are theses and senior papers of graduate
and undergraduate students of the School of Law. The findings are indicated in sections
where the Ethiopian situation is explored. As it should be clear, the sample taken is not
representative of legal research outputs in law schools let alone in Ethiopia. However,
given the communality of legal research tools and methods in many jurisdictions, the
writer believes that similar findings are expected in legal studies in Ethiopia, in
academics and in practice alike. Moreover, as is in the nature of exploratory research,
which this article is, it should be the issues raised and not the findings that concern
readers most.

2. Note on Terminology
At the outset, it is important to clarify the meaning of terms in this article. This is partly
because one of the article’s aims is to explain terms in methodology. A person interested
in legal research might come across words like legal research methods, legal
methodology, doctrinal research, non-doctrinal research, empirical legal research,
research in law and how to find the law, just to name a few. These terms, as will be
3
explained in subsequent paragraphs and sections, might have differing meanings, some of
them identifying the conventional legal research, others meaning in the broadest sense,
still others referring to different categories of legal research, and so on. For example, in
Black’s Law Dictionary, one finds legal research as “the finding and assembling of
authorities that bear on a question of law,”2 which mirrors the traditional legal research
but oblivious to the nascent empirical legal research concerned more in what is
happening in society than what books of law such as proclamations say or do not say.

To provide framework for later discussions, this article borrows an illuminating

classification of legal research by Paul Chynoweth, who himself depended on the work of
a Canadian report on legal education. According to him, legal research is classified into
two: doctrinal legal research (which is also research in law) and interdisciplinary
(sometimes called non-doctrinal or research about law). Based on their application, these
two in turn are classified into two: applied and pure research. Joining them together, the
classification will have four strands: in doctrinal research, which is about “formulation of
legal ‘doctrines’ through the analysis of legal rules,” there are two, one being expository
research (an applied one and exemplified by black-letter law research used to write legal
textbooks, treatises, articles or legal memorandums) and two being legal theory research
(which is ‘pure’ and could be exemplified by researches in legal philosophy); and in
interdisciplinary research there are fundamental research (pure research, example being
theoretical researches in law and economics) and empirical research (applied one,
example being an empirical research carried out with the aim of law reform). 3

Any Ethiopian legislative measure could be taken to elucidate the classification. Consider
the Disclosure and Registration of Assets Proclamation No.668 /2010, which roughly
requires (Article 4), “any appointee, elected person or public servant shall have the
obligation to disclose and register the assets under the ownership or possession of himself
and his family; and sources of his income and those of his family.” One question for a
legal scholar might be if the Proclamation violated any constitutional right of an
appointee such as the right to privacy of Article 26 of the Constitution of Federal
Democratic Republic Ethiopia (FDRE) in asking the appointee to register her property,
which might normally be considered as private. Despite the merit of the issue, a legal
memorandum could be written on constitutionality of the parliamentary act, which will
be a doctrinal research exposing constitutionality of one of the provisions of the
Proclamation. It might also be that the prosecutor is indicting an appointee for failure to
register, which is punishable under the Criminal Code. This again is an issue of doctrinal
research, expository one. On the other hand, a legal philosopher might have interest in the

2
Bryan A. Garner (ed.), Black’s Law Dictionary (7th ed., 1999)
3
Paul Chynoweth, “Legal research”, in Andrew Knight and Les Ruddock, Advanced Research Methods in
the Built Environment (2008), p. 29

4
parliamentary act and wonder if the government is morally justified in imposing a penalty
of fee in preference to firing the appointee for example, which might be called legal
theory research. Again it is possible that a legal scholar or a student of “law and
economics” might raise a theoretical question if the legislation contributes to economic
efficiency by deterring corruption, which will be a kind of research one might consider
fundamental and interdisciplinary legal research. Again a legal researcher might inquire
effects, if any, on the conduct of public officials of the passing of this particular
legislation, e.g. whether corruption has dropped down since the adoption of the
legislation, carrying out an applied interdisciplinary research.

The article shares this classification, which is prevalent in legal research discourse. But in
line with its objective of clarification of methodology specifically on similarities and
differences in legal methods, the article takes two general categories of legal research:
one is doctrinal research, the conventional legal research which coincides with the first
general class in the previous classification and two is empirical legal research, the kind of
research common in the social sciences.

This categorization might leave out one particular class that is usually called fundamental
research about law such as ‘law and economics’, for instance asking if the Ethiopian law
on trade practice is informed by rational choice theory. The intention is not to discard this
sub-division as irrelevant to the study of legal research. After all "understanding" and
"critique" of the law based on perspectives from economics, history, and so forth have
always figured in legal scholarship.4 Rather its methodological issues could be generally
merged with the doctrinal legal research. Intuitively, one can say, a legal researcher
interested in such kinds of research could familiarize himself with theories and models of
the discipline and deploy logic, critical analysis, deductive and inductive reasoning,
which are available from traditional legal research, and carry out the study. On the other
hand, since empirical legal research – the fourth kind – raises peculiar methodological
challenges to students of law, it merited separate discussion.

It should be noted that the categories in this article as elsewhere owe their existence to
their strength in elucidating methods in legal research. Other classifications and
terminologies could be easily entertained and justified for various purposes. For example,
in an informative collection of Research Methods for Law, editors identify for
examination three major types of legal research, namely empirical legal research,
international and comparative legal research, and doctrinal research.5 While the
classification in this article does not profess universality, for the purpose of this article

4
Philip C. Kissam, “The Evaluation of Legal Scholarship,” 63 Wash. L. Rev. 221 1988, p. 236
5
Mike McConville and Wing Hong Chui, “Introduction and Overview”, in Mike McConville and Wing
Hong Chui (eds.), Research Methods for Law, (2007), p. 3

5
the latter two could be combined under the doctrinal research category while the former
retains its separate category. Again as will be commented upon later, there are writers
who consider law finders as legal research methods. But they are mere tools helpful in a
standard legal research to locate law and legal authorities and are not methods as such.

On use of terminology of ‘method,’ a point has to be made. Some legal scholars take
legal method for applied theory or science of law. One might encounter a book on legal
methods which elaborates schools of legal thought or theories of law such as legal
positivism and critical legal studies. Of course, these theories have significantly
influenced tools, techniques, sources, or generally methods of legal research. But their
identification as methods or models should not be understood as methods in the social
sciences or methods as used in this article. Here falls the adoption of the term ‘methods’
in a Symposium on Method in International Law resulting in an excellent guide in the
study and practice of international law. As elaborated in the Symposium, the “link
between a legal theory and a legal method is … one between the abstract and the
applied.”6(Emphases added!) Hence legal methods are equated with schools of legal
thought or theories of law, except the practice orientation of methods. And that is also
why the Symposium used terms like “positivist method”.7 Although such usage of the
term ‘legal methods’ is common among legal scholars and has to be elaborated in
Ethiopian context, this article does not employ ‘method’ in that sense.

3. Doctrinal Research and Methods

The task of the legal scholar was seen as being to extract a doctrine from a line of
cases or from statutory text and history, restate it, perhaps criticize it or seek to
extend it, all the while striving for "sensible" results in light of legal principles and
common sense. Logic, analogy, judicial decisions, a handful of principles such as
stare decisis, and common sense were the tools of analysis. The humanities and the
social sciences were rarely mentioned.
Judge Richard A. Posner
Legal Scholarship Today, 115 Harvard Law Review 1316 (2002)

A note is in order before discussion of doctrinal research methods. Traditionally legal

practice, study, and writing have been shy of using the term research methods in doctrinal
scholarship. Contributing factors are many. One is that traditional approaches in law were
6
Steven R. Ratner and Anne-Marie Slaughter, “Appraising the Methods of International Law: A
Prospectus for Readers, Symposium on Method in International Law”, 93 Am. J. Int'l L. 291 1999, pp. 292
& 293. Organizers of the symposium identify seven methods for appraisal: legal positivism, the New Haven
School, international legal process, critical legal studies, international law and international relations,
feminist jurisprudence, and law and economics. Many of these methods, which correspond with theories in
international law, are adapted from general theories in law and are regarded as representing the “major
methods of international legal scholarship.”
7
Ibid.

6
different from methods in the social and natural sciences and hence the term method was
considered unsuitable for legal studies.8 This could be illustrated by the perception people
had towards traditional legal research. Take for example crucial legal works such as
treatises, legal encyclopedias, and restatements. For some, the undertakings to produce
those legal writings were not legal researches simply because legal research is “the
scientific study of law,” which involves the “formulation of … propositions … and …
verification by observation.”9 Hence according to such perception unless there are
propositions and empirical investigations, a legal study cannot be considered as method.
But this is not something all scholars have agreed with. The undertakings of doctrinal
research which mainly comprise illumination of the law, holding positions, and giving
reasons for legal inconsistencies have been considered “tremendously important research
undertaking.”10

The other contributing factor for reluctance in use of research methods in doctrinal
studies has been lack of separate study in legal methodology with exceptions of studies in
bibliography and finding tools, which instead of methods should be conveniently called
tools assisting the carrying out of legal research.11 As a matter of fact, methods in the
study of law were dispersed in substantive courses. Methods of legal analysis, for
example, are not considered separate studies of law instead being considered as skills
students of law develop with the study of substantive laws. Methods or skills in legal
scholarship are said to be learned at an “instinctive level through exposure to the
process.”12 Another factor is lack of understanding among legal scholars on what
amounted to methods. As Professor Ulen indicated, there is little consensus on what
amounts to methods in legal inquiries.13

Coming to the topic of this section, doctrinal legal research – sometimes called research
in law – is the traditional and standard form of legal research. Its main component of
research is black-letter law, which is about “what the prevailing state of legal doctrine

8
See, for example, James Huffman, “Is the Law Graduate Prepared to do Research?”, 26 J. Legal Educ.
520 1973-1974, p. 520, which says, “what the law schools and lawyers call legal research is not research at
all as the term is understood by physical and social scientists. … Legal research, as taught in the law school
course of that or similar appellation, is the technique of using legal source materials - cases, statutes,
regulations, etc.- to determine what the law is.”
9
Hessel E. Yntema, “‘Looking out of the Cave’—Some Remarks on Comparative Legal Research”, in
Alfred F. Conard (ed.), Conference on Aims and Methods of Legal Research (1957), p. 58-59
10
Albert J. Harno, “Comments”, in Alfred F. Conard (ed.), Conference on Aims and Methods of Legal
Research (1957), p. 143
11
On the teaching of legal bibliography as a subject in American legal education, see Frederick C. Hicks,
“The Teaching of Legal Bibliography”, 11 Law Libr. J. 1 1918. An Ethiopian law student may be amused
of the idea of learning of bibliography as a course; but when he understands the existence of millions of
legal materials to look for in carrying out a research, the student will be less so.
12
Chynoweth, cited above at note 3, p. 35
13
Thomas S. Ulen, “A Nobel Prize in Legal Science: Theory, Empirical Work, and The Scientific Method
in the Study of Law”, 2002 U. Ill. L. Rev. 875 2002, p. 881

7
is.”14 Unlike empirical research, doctrinal research relies on “reason and analysis” rather
than data from outside sources and on theories that “presume to describe the world”
rather than “hypothesis that have been subjected to empirical testing.”15

According to Judge Edwards, the defining features of traditional legal research (the term
he applies is "Practical" legal scholarship) are two: one, being prescriptive in analyzing
the law to instruct attorneys in consideration of legal problems, to guide judges and
decision-makers in their resolution of legal disputes, and to advise policymakers on law
reform; and two, being doctrinal in attending to the various sources of law such as
precedents and statutes that constrain or guide the practitioner and policymaker.16 While
the first point identifies the normative nature of standard legal research, the second
explains the justification for the primary focus of doctrinal legal research on legal texts –
both texts of the law, e.g. proclamations and texts about the law, e.g. journal articles.17

A cursory glance at doctrinal legal scholarship indicates the existence of crucial

techniques and skills that could be explained under doctrinal research methods. Major
methods include legal analysis, legal synthesis, methods of interpretation, and methods of
legal reasoning. The aim of legal analysis, which is the principal tool in doctrinal legal
research, is to “reduce, separate, and break down cases, statutes, and other legal materials
into separate elements” and offer “explanations, interpretations, and criticisms of the
elements of the case or statute analyzed.”18 Legal synthesis, on the other hand, aims at
combining the “disparate elements of cases and statutes together into coherent or useful
legal standards or general rules.”19 Another important category of skills or methods in
doctrinal legal studies is the ability to exploit various methods of legal reasoning, which
are mostly identified as deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning.20 Methods of
interpretation are also important tools in the undertaking of legal research. The familiar
cannons of interpretation that have profound importance in doctrinal research include
language use, especially in understanding the language of law that demands precision,
formality, and generalization, textual interpretation, legislator’s intent, historical

14
Karl N. Llewellyn, “Social Significance in Legal Problems” in Alfred F. Conard (ed.), Conference on
Aims and Methods of Legal Research (1957), p. 27. The same definition applies to Chynoweth, cited above
at note 3, p. 30, who identifies the concern of doctrinal research as “the discovery and development of legal
doctrines for publication in textbooks or journal articles and its research questions” that “take the form of
asking ‘what is the law?’, which is different from “questions asked by empirical investigators.”
15
Shari Siedman Diamond, “Empirical Marine Life in Legal Waters: Clams, Dolphins, and Plankton”,
2002 U. Ill. L. Rev. 803 2002, p. 805
16
Harry T. Edwards, “The Growing Disjunction between Legal Education and the Legal Profession”, 91
Mich. L. Rev. 34 1992-1993, p. 42
17
Sharon Hanson, Legal Method & Reasoning (2nd ed., 2003), p. 1
18
Kissam, cited above at note 4, pp 231 & 232
19
Ibid.
20
For explanation of these methods of reasoning, see Terence Anderson, David Schum, and William
Twining, Analysis of Evidence (2nd ed., 2005), p. 56.

8
consideration, comparative analysis, textual interpretation, and teleological
construction.21

In deployment of these traditional legal research methods, stages of legal research

undertakings are generally clear. In a standard doctrinal research, there is a legal
situation, a legal researcher analyzes the problem by identifying the facts of the case and
legal issues, locates relevant legal texts from primary and secondary sources (which
could be a legislation, a case, a journal article, or a database), evaluates and updates, and
finally applies the rules to the facts of the case.22 All of these legal research activities are
assisted by finding tools such as codes or consolidations of laws, chronological
publications of laws, digests, authority finders, and indices.23

Finally it should be noted that like disciplines in humanities, doctrinal legal research is
not preoccupied with empiricism and as such might largely ignore methods in empirical
investigation.24 Unlike researches in social and natural sciences, doctrinal research does
not have lists of questions, questionnaire, observation, and experimentation in order to
gather empirical data from outside. Hence its methods might differ and tempt some into
denying the concept of methodology to doctrinal research. Again some might
conveniently consider its methodologies as “techniques of qualitative analysis.”25 But
whether called by the name methodology or not, they are complex and powerful
techniques of traditional legal research that could match the esteem (if one cares!) of the
often praised “scientific” methods in empirical scholarship.

4. Legal Research and How to Find the Law

With quick review of library catalogues with the title “legal research” in the School of
Law (AAU), one uncovers materials on how to find the law, by varied names such as how
to find the law, practical guide to legal research, and legal research handbook, all of
them referring to finding tools.26 In these legal research materials, legal research is
portrayed as synonymous to finding the law, in effect identifying finding tools with legal
research methods. First, it should be clear that finding tools are not legal research
methods, and hence they should not be mistaken for the “qualitative skills” of the

21
For more on cannons of interpretation, see Matthias Klatt, Making the Law Explicit: The Normativity of
Legal Argumentation (2008), p. 17.
22
This exercise is mostly practiced in courses such as legal skills or legal writing. See Hanson, cited above
at note 17, for more on legal argument construction, p. 207.
23
Morris L. Cohen and Robert C Berring, How to Find the Law (8th ed., 1983), p. 377. See section 4 of this
article for finding tools.
24
Chynoweth, cited above at note 3, p. 37
25
Ibid.
26
The situation is not peculiar to an Ethiopian law school. For example, those who searched for “legal
research books” in an Australian university found out that “legal research means finding the law.” See
Desmond Manderson and Richard Mohr, “From Oxymoron to Intersection: an Epidemiology of Legal
Research”, 6 Law Text Culture 159 2002, p. 160.

9
traditional legal research identified in the previous section. Rather, they are tools utilized
to locate the provisions of the law. Second and the point of this section, it is hard to
overemphasize the importance of finding tools in carrying out doctrinal research. Simply
stated, finding tools simplify access to laws, without which doctrinal analysis is not
possible. Quick and efficient finding of the law is hard to imagine without finding tools.
One could suppose a situation where thousands of statutory rules and judicial precedents
exist in a given legal system.27 How could a lawyer find the law – statutory rule or a
precedent – pertinent to the issue at hand from this bulk of legal materials? Whether one
likes it or not, everyday activities of the legal researcher – in academics or practice –
relate to finding the law and finding tools are crucial.

Major factors that determine the type and complexity of finding tools of traditional legal
research include the characteristics of the law that basically mean the interaction between
certainty and stability of the law, the legal system such as the existence or lack of stare
decisis in the system, multiplicity of primary sources of law that might probably be the
number of statutes, judicial opinions and other primary sources of law, forms and
volumes of publication of laws such as the existence of official and unofficial practice of
law reporting, principles of interpretation adopted in the system, court structures,
prevailing classifications of laws, governance structure , e.g. unitary vs. federal structure,
hierarchy of laws, existence of statutory compilation or codes, and the variety of
secondary sources.28 Below is a brief outline of finding tools, which are likely to be
found in any given legal system.

Finding Tools
As already explained in the previous paragraphs, for quick and efficient undertaking of
legal research, doctrinal research has to employ finding tools – a term which includes
consolidations, ‘codes’, digests, encyclopedias, catalogs, indices, tables, and computers
that facilitate the access of law and legal materials to the legal researcher.29 Although
sources of laws might vary as variations in legal systems, the law is usually sought in
statutes, precedents, and secondary sources of law. To find the law in such legal
materials, the following tools are commonly applied.

Case Finders
In common law tradition where judicial precedents are sources of primary authority,
case-finding – a process for locating judicial decisions30– is a crucial skill that determines

27
In American legal system, they have millions of reported cases and statutes; hence it is difficult to
imagine tasks of legal research without finding tools. See Cohen and Berring, cited above at note 23, for
more on the enormity and complexity of American legal materials and finding tools.
28
See Cohen and Berring, cited above at note 23, especially pp 2-5.
29
Ibid.
30
Id, p. 99

10
the success of legal research. Owing to its importance, in the USA for example, legal
research materials have given considerable attention to cases, forms of publication, and
their finding tools.31 Such might not be the case for Ethiopia where the principle of
judicial precedent has limited application. In any case, however, in many common law
countries, there are different approaches to case finders such as traditional case digest
systems, table of cases, word indices, legal encyclopedias, restatements, computer based
search systems, and various secondary materials such as casebooks. These tools are
publications, either official or commercial, put to use by legal researchers to locate cases
or precedents.32

Statute Finders
Most relevant finding tools to legal systems such as Ethiopia’s whose primary source of
law is statute or legislation are statute finders. These could be chronological publications,
indices of laws, legal consolidations or ‘codes’ in common law countries, encyclopedias,
indices of legal periodicals, textbooks, and treatises.33

Authority finders
Before the search for the law is complete, one need ensure the current status of the
statutory rule or the precedent. Since a statute or a case might be repealed, reversed,
modified or amended, this function of authority finders is valuable lest one argues based
on repealed or reversed provision of the law, a disastrous scenario lawyers are always
anxious to avoid. While legal systems have their own tools to find authorities, the
America’s Shepard’s Citations are well known.34 Shepard’s Citations “trace the judicial
history of every published decision, and the later legislative and judicial treatment of
every enacted statute.”35

5. Empirical Legal Research and Methods

For the rational study of the law the black-letter man may be the man of
the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the
master of economics.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,

31
Id, p. 17
32
Details on these and lessons from American finding tools and for comprehensive treatment of specific
tools such as the West’s American Digest System, Shepard’s Citations, computer search services, etc are
found in Cohen and Berring, cited above at note 23. Recent editions of this material might be more useful.
33
Cohen and Berring, cited above at note 23, p. 13. A ‘code’ in common law tradition refers to a subject
compilation of current statutes of a given jurisdiction.
34
Ibid. Shepard’s Citations is “a set of volumes, which for statutes, indicates every modifications effected
by the legislature and cites every judicial opinion which has construed, applied, or even mentioned it. It
also performs a similar function for judicial opinions, citing every case which has in any way commented
upon a prior case, and indicating the effect of each such subsequent opinion upon the precedential authority
of the cited case.”
35
Id, p. 250

11
 The Path of the Law, 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897)

Three advance notices: one, as should be understood from notes on classification,

empirical legal research and research about law are not one and the same. For this article
at least, the latter is broader and includes theoretical studies such as theoretical parts of
the “law and society”. This section of the article outlines the former. The latter part, i.e.
the “law and” study, as remarked in the second section, does not raise radical
methodological difficulty apart from traditional legal scholarship and hence its
association with methods in doctrinal research. Therefore, apart from its contribution for
the emergence of empirical research indicated later, it should be left out of this section.

Two, by empirical, reference is made to both quantitative and qualitative analysis. There
is nothing new with this passing note. Black’s Law Dictionary defines empirical as “of,
or relating to, or based on experience, experiment or observation,” irrespective of
numerical or non-numerical nature of the function. Three, as Professor Diamond says, it
is “misleading to view the categories of empirical and non-empirical as mutually
exclusive.”36 Traditional doctrinal study usually requires empirical investigation. For
example, it is through empirical investigation that the existence of a law could be
ascertained. As Professors Epstein and King identify in their excellent work on empirical
legal research, a “large fraction of legal scholarship [in the US] makes at least some
claims about the world based on observation or experience.”37 In a similar tone, Professor
George, who has carried out an empirical research of empirical legal scholarship, states
“nearly all law review scholarship [which is the mouth piece of the traditional legal
research] offers some statement about the real world, and thus has an empirical
component.”38

Legal realism39 is believed to have initiated empiricism in law, with legal realists’
expectations that empirical research revealed the “true nature of law.”40 But these did not
mean that legal scholars immediately scrambled to undertake empirical legal research.
Instead legal realists looked in other disciplines for empirical findings.41 The subsequent
development of the “Law and” movement such as “law and economics” might have also

36
Diamond, cited above at note 15, p. 805
37
Lee Epstein and Gary King, “The Rules of Inference”, 2002 The University of Chicago Law Review,
Vol. 69 No. 1, p. 3. In the article, the authors adapt “the rules of inference used in the social and natural
sciences to the special needs, theories, and data in legal scholarship.”
38
Tracey George, “An Empirical Study of Empirical Legal Scholarship: The Top Law Schools”, 2005
Indiana Law Journal 81(1), p. 146. This article interestingly assesses “law schools based on their place in
the ELS [empirical legal scholarship] movement and offers an essential ranking framework that can be
adopted for other movements as well.”
39
Legal Realism is a theory that says “law is based, not on formal rules or principles, but instead on judicial
decisions that should derive from social interests and public policy.” Garner, cited above at note 2
40
George, cited above at note 38, p. 144
41
Id., p. 146

12
increased the chances of empirical legal scholarship.42 Although scholars carrying on
“law and society” research varied in methods, they were all committed to methods
outside the law and to understanding of the law in terms of its social context.43

Unlike non-empirical legal scholarship which is usually concerned with how legal
institutions “ought to behave,” the concern in empirical legal studies is usually about the
actual behavior of the law and its institutions.44 In a typical empirical legal study, the
empirical legal scholar offers a hypothesis of a law or legal institution and then tests that
hypothesis using quantitative and qualitative techniques developed in the social and
sometimes natural sciences. The evidence may be amassed by laboratory experiment such
as simulated judges or collected systematically from real world observation such as the
actual observation of treatment of children in school to identify elements of
discrimination, field researches such as on implementation of a certain legislative act,
case studies, e.g. studying court cases of an issue with documents and interviews with
plaintiffs and defendants, and archival analysis, e.g. review of all cases of the Cassation
Division of the Federal Supreme Court with a sentence of life imprisonment.45

5.1 Methods for Empirical Legal Scholarship

There are various methods developed by social and natural sciences. A look at the outline
of a textbook on social science research displays helpful insights on methods of empirical
research. In a standard social science research, the following terms and concepts
frequently appear: research topic, research question, hypothesis, quantitative/qualitative
research, research proposals, research objectives, research design, experimental research,
descriptive/correlational research, literature review, population, random/non-random
sampling, data gathering, interview/questionnaire, FGD (focus group discussion),
experiment, survey, observation, data analysis, statistics, SPSS (Statistical Package for
the Social Sciences), internal/external validity, triangulation, ethnography, variables,
replication, research ethics, and research report. 46 Many of these terms expectedly are
new to the traditional legal scholar. But these are some of the concepts one has to use
when setting out to perform empirical investigation. The question is: should the legal
scholar take these concepts in methods and their interrelationship in the social sciences
and apply them to empirical legal research?

42
Ibid.
43
Lawrence M. Friedman, “The Law and Society Movement,” 38 Stan. L. Rev. 763 1985-1986, p. 763
44
Diamond, cited above at note 15, p. 806
45
See Diamond, cited above at note 15 for explanation of some of the forms of empirical legal research.
46
This is to incidentally mention terms/concepts one encounters and there is no intention here whatsoever
to discuss methods in social sciences as applied to legal research. They are left for future research tasks.
For those interested in social science methods, there are easily accessible books online and just googling
will result in valuable research books.

13
One thing is clear. The traditional legal scholarship does not have a complete list of
methods to carry out empirical legal research. Hence, it is argued, “legal scholarship
needs to rely on other methodologies” to obtain empirical data vital to understand “the
forces that act upon the legal system and of the impact of legal decisions.”47 What remain
is which methods to select for adaptation to empirical legal scholarship. “The most useful
fields,” Professor Rubin points out, are those “whose subject matter overlaps with that of
law and legal scholarship,” providing economics, political science, and sociology as
illustrations.48 Different legal writers have also introduced various methods from other
disciplines.49 For example, Professor Harcourt introduced to legal studies correspondence
analysis, a method that “integrates in-depth qualitative interviews with an experimental
free associational component, map analysis of the interviews.”50

5.2 Why Empirical Research Methods to the Lawyer

A question might be asked as to why law students who are likely to engage in traditional
legal research as judges, for example, should be concerned with methods of empirical
legal research. Two general categories of answers are identified: the lawyer as the
‘consumer’ and the lawyer as the ‘producer’ of empirical research.51

As the consumer of empirical scholarship, courts have always resorted to empirical

evidence from other disciplines such as the social sciences. It is possible to mention
frequently cited US Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the
Court utilized researches from the social sciences and determined “separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal.”52 Although no empirical data is available to the writer
to tell the situation of use of scientific findings in Ethiopian courts, a point could be made
using the concept of expert testimony in the Criminal Code. Article 51 provides for
expert testimony.53 Specifically sub-article three says “on the basis of the expert evidence
the Court shall make such decision … In reaching its decision it shall be bound solely by
definite scientific findings and not by the appreciation of the expert as to the legal
inferences...” (Emphasis added!)

47
Edward L. Rubin, “Law and the Methodology of Law”, 1997 Wis. L. Rev. 521 1997, p. 521
48
Id., p. 565
49
For a comprehensive adaptation of research methods to empirical legal scholarship, especially aimed for
use by legal scholars and explained with the help of actual empirical legal researches in connection with
amassing data, summarizing data, making descriptive or causal inferences, replication, and research design
(research questions, hypothesis, measurement, estimation, recording the process, identification of
population, sampling) see Epstein and King, cited above at note 37.
50
Bernard E. Harcourt, “Measured Interpretation: Introducing the Methods of Correspondence Analysis to
Legal Studies”, 2002 U. Ill. L. Rev. 979 2002
51
For brief explanation on being a consumer and producer of research, see Scott W. Vanderstoep and
Deirdre D. Johnston, Research Methods for Everyday Life: Blending Qualitative and Quantitative
Approaches (2009).
52
Cohen and Berring, cited above at note 23, p. 556
53
The Criminal Code of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, 2004, Art. 51, Proc. No. 414/2004

14
An issue might arise as to the sub-article’s implied assumption that scientific findings are
always definite. As a matter of fact the main criticism for use of empirical data for legal
decision making is that empirical evidence presented to courts is usually “flawed and
unhelpful.”54 Again, the sub-article does not state the criteria for the Court to determine
whether the finding is scientific or not.55 This point is more relevant to the discussion
here. What if there are competing scientific findings in the area under consideration?
Reasonably, the Court has to apply the criteria of methods to appreciate competing
findings. As Professor Meares indicated, “courts, with absence of training in empiricism,
are not capable of dealing with complicated and sometimes conflicting social science
data.”56 This argument applies to all participants in law and legal institutions:
practitioners, academicians, policy makers, and legal researchers.

Moreover the complete understanding of law and the legal system is difficult without the
help of empiricism. The traditional legal scholarship usually considered law as “self-
contained system that... works like a syllogism” with abstract principles and legal rules
“combined with … facts … leading deductively to legal outcomes.”57 However, in reality
as explained by law and society movement, law is “far from a closed system of logic”
and “is tightly interconnected with society.”58

Overall as often asserted, most of a lawyer’s work involves factual issues “rather than
great abstract issues of law,” requiring the ability to find and use facts.59 This in effect
requires mastery of methods of empirical research which would permit the assessment of
accuracy and validity of data.

Equally important, as producer, a lawyer needs methods to produce empirical legal

scholarship. As already outlined in previous sections, legal scholars have been carrying
out empirical research. What was missing in those research works has been the
observance of methods of empirical study. Even in Ethiopian research practices at law
schools, it is common to encounter researches on “the law and the practice” – for
example, consider a research topic which reads “Freedom of Information in Ethiopia: the
Law and the Practice.”60 Although it seems on the face doctrinal research, such

54
Tracy L. Meares, “Three objections to the Use of Empiricism in Criminal Law and Procedure – and
Three Answers,” 2002 U. Ill. L. Rev. 851 2002, p. 854
55
For example the US Supreme Court has identified four criteria for expert testimony to be considered as
scientific which are associated with possibility of falsifiability of the theories, publication of the methods in
peer-reviewed journals, existence of known rate of error, and methods generally accepted in the scientific
community concerned. Ulen, cited above at note 13
56
Meares, cited above at note 54
57
Kitty Calavita, Invitation to Law & Society: An Introduction to the Study of Real Law, (2010), p. 4
58
Id, p. 5
59
Cohen and Berring, cited above at note 23, p. 517
60
Freedom of the Mass Media and Access to Information Proclamation,2008, Proc. No 590, Neg. Gaz.
Year 14, No. 64

15
researches have elements in empirical investigation. How does the researcher know the
practice? Obviously, through empirical investigation of the behavior of institutions and
individuals involved. Without the knowledge and proper utilization of methods in
empirical investigation, the researcher is unlikely to accurately describe the practice.
Hence systematic usage of methods is required to accept findings that claim to represent
reality.

Another practical reason might be, unlike in the past, many students and practitioners of
law are being called up on, out of necessity in most cases, to carry out empirical
investigation. For example, many investigative researches on the implementation of
human rights laws in Ethiopia are being carried out by lawyers. Moreover, a few
graduates of law are also shunning the traditional practice of law preferring to engage in
other undertakings requiring skills in empirical research. In all these activities, methods
in empirical research are very important.

It should be noted here that empirical legal scholarship could be carried out by students
from social sciences with their tools and techniques in empirical research, depriving any
urgency to the engagement of law students. It is also quite possible that empirical legal
scholarship is “open to participants from the social sciences,” the principal reason being
law schools’ traditional reluctance to train empirical scholars.61 However, “non-lawyers
have the distinct disadvantage of often not understanding legal doctrine or the state of the
law” to carry out empirical legal scholarship.62 By studying methods in empirical
research, the lawyer will exploit the advantage of understanding the contours of law and
its institutions.

5.3 Areas for Empirical Legal Scholarship

Theoretically speaking, almost all areas of law are candidates to empirical investigation.
Although evidence of increased empirical legal research is found across numerous areas
of legal scholarship, its development within particular areas is said to be uneven.63
Regarding legal institutions, for example, studies about court attitudes are common in
empirical studies in the USA, resulting in interesting insights in judicial behavior. For
example, a systematic analysis of appellate court behavior indicated that defendants have
substantial advantage over plaintiffs on appeal.64 Regarding doctrines, examples are
abundant. Professor Korobkin in the USA, for example, carried out review of empirical

61
Mark Suchman, “Empirical Legal Studies: Sociology of Law, or Something ELS Entirely?” Amici 2006
13(2), pp 1-4
62
Theodore Eisenberg, “Why Do Empirical Legal Scholarship?”, 41 San Diego L. Rev. 1741 2004, p. 1741
63
Michael Heise, “The Past, Present, and Future of Empirical Leal Scholarship: Judicial Decision Making
and the New Empiricism”, 2002 U. Ill. L. Rev. 819, p. 825
64
Kevin M. Clermont and Theodore Eisenberg, “Plaintiphobia in the Appellate Courts: Civil Rights Really
Do Differ from Negotiable Instruments”, 2002 U. Ill. L. Rev. 947

16
researches in contract law, which dealt with various issues including contracting practices
of parties, experimental studies of contracting behavior (using hypothetical parties), and
opinions of contracting parties about contract law.65

5.4 Shortage of Empirical Legal Research

While there are a number of legal issues that could be subjected to it, empirical legal
scholarship has not matched the volume of traditional legal scholarship. Some writers
speculated on reasons for the shortage of empirical legal research. One is the traditional
perception that law by itself is the “servant of the legal profession,” interested in
“expository, doctrinal or black-letter tradition” instead of empirical investigation.66
Others include lack of theoretical work that could stimulate a demand for empirical work
and lack of training necessary to carry out empirical investigation.67 A hard work
required for empirical legal scholarship, a fear of embarrassment of falsification by
replication (a possibility in empirical scholarship), lack of prestige for empirical legal
research, and lack of institutional incentive are all identified as contributing to the
shortage of empirical studies in law.68 Other reasons provided for neglect of empirical
legal scholarship include the inconvenience of going out of the library, inability to control
data from the field, uncertainty of findings, and constraints in resources and time.69 “Lack
of an adequate market for those who become trained personnel” has also been long
identified.70

6. ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ Sources

Another point of ambiguity in the study of legal research methods has been the meanings
of these terms as used in law and elsewhere. Before a brief outline, one initial distinction
has to be made. Primary source is no primary legislation. The terms primary and
secondary used together with the term legislation simply identify the hierarchy of
institutions issuing the laws. In English legal system, for example, primary legislation or
simply statute is a legislation issued by the Parliament while secondary legislation
(delegated legislation or subordinate legislation) is issued by authorized lower organs.71
In the federal context of Ethiopia, proclamations would be primary legislations while
regulations and directives fall under the category of secondary legislations.

65
Russsell Korobkin, “Empirical Scholarship in Contract Law: Possibilities and Pitfalls”, 2002 U. Ill. L.
Rev. 1033
66
Paul Chynoweth, “Editorial”, International Journal of Law in the Built Environment, 2009 Vol. 1 No. 1
pp 5-8
67
Ulen, cited above at note 13, p. 914. The article suggests ways and methods for the scientific study of
law.
68
Michael Heise, “The Importance of Being Empirical” 26 Pepp. L. Rev. 807 1998-1999, pp. 816-824
69
Peter H. Schuck, “Why Don't Law Professors Do More Empirical Research?”, 39 J. Legal Educ. 323
1989, pp. 333 & 334
70
Llewellyn, cited above at note 14, p.14
71
Hanson, cited above at note 17, p. 40

17
 6.1 ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ Sources in Doctrinal Legal Research
In doctrinal legal research, the terms primary and secondary refer normally to sources of
law. Hence they are about the binding nature of the ‘authority’ under consideration.
Primary sources of law, which have binding nature, might be statutes and judicial
opinions, assuming the latter are also binding in the given legal system. In Ethiopian
context, primary sources include proclamations, regulations, and directives. On the other
hand, secondary sources of law, which mostly cite or analyze primary sources, do not
have the binding force as statutes. However, depending on their quality, they may have
persuasive power in supporting legal arguments presented based upon primary sources of
law.72 In the category of secondary sources of law fall legal encyclopedias, treatises, civil
law commentaries, textbooks, restatements, legal dictionaries, or periodical articles,
which are helpful for their explanation of concepts, terminology, rules, and summaries of
primary sources of law.73 In continental legal tradition such as in Ethiopia where there is
limited application of the principle of judicial precedent, court decisions are also good
secondary sources of law.

6.2 ‘Primary’ and ‘Secondary’ in Empirical Legal Research

Taking the example of empirical scholarship in other disciplines, this classification has to
depend on how the data is obtained. First-hand data collected by the researcher is
considered primary data, while information obtained from reports made available by
other researchers or interested people would be secondary data. Hence from this, data
obtained by observation, experiment, archival analysis, etc by the legal researcher herself
will be primary data and the source primary source of data. Other data obtained by
reviewing research reports, books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, abstracts, etc
would be secondary data and the source secondary source of data.

7. Legal Research in Ethiopia

As indicated in the introductory section, issues and assertions on the state of Ethiopian
legal research methods are based on personal observations74, exchanges of ideas with
colleagues teaching law, legal practitioners and students, and an empirical survey. Having
noted this, in this paragraph, issues helping the reader appreciate the gravity of concerns
in legal research tools and methods in Ethiopia are raised. General questions first: where
is the Ethiopian jurisprudence found – the state of the law, the books, the journals, the
cases, and the authorities? Or in terms of the scholar, do academicians and practitioners
of law in Ethiopia quickly and efficiently navigate their way out of all constitutions,
proclamations, regulations, directives, and policies of the State every time they encounter

72
Cohen and Berring, cited above at note 23, p. 14
73
Id, p. 433
74
Among others, two years back, the writer taught legal research methods to students of the School of Law
(AAU). Students’ home assignments and class discussions focused mostly on types of research of selected
undergraduate papers, what factors made them so, whether the papers combined features of other research
types, what law finding tools were available to the student, etc.

18
a legal issue? Less general: does the Ethiopian legal researcher have bibliographies or
indices identifying materials to understand national jurisprudence? A specific one: how
many law review journals are published in Ethiopia and is there a device or tool – such as
a periodical index – to systematically retrieve and consume any of the articles in those
journals? A question on use of resources: is there any way of finding out whether any
Ethiopian law article or a book has ever assisted in court litigations or policy making? A
question on practice: what is the situation and utility of empirical legal scholarship in
Ethiopia? Having raised general questions, additional questions, many of them rhetorical,
are raised where necessary under categories of doctrinal and empirical research.

7.1 Doctrinal Research

What finding tools do Ethiopian legal scholars have for primary sources of law? From the
writer’s observation, there are not many finding tools in Ethiopia that could be used in
doctrinal legal research. This question has also been part of the survey conducted at the
School of Law. To begin with, one could say that the question may not necessarily be
answered by looking at mere research reports since there is no obligation under rules of
citation to specify how one finds the law except that the law is cited. Although that is
mostly true, clues could be found in the introductory and bibliographic parts of research
reports. For lack of Ethiopian finding tools, however, no Ethiopian consolidations, law
finders, and encyclopaedias were identified in the research reports investigated. Still
Ethiopian journals, books, Negarit Gazetas, and cases cited in the investigated articles
and papers could be taken as finding tools although their principal aim in the reports is
serving as sources of laws, ideas, arguments and authorities.

Owing to nature and lack of systematic organization of these sources, however, their
services as finding tools are very much limited. Regarding Ethiopian journals and books,
they are not systematically indexed and hence there is little guarantee that they are either
comprehensive or up to date. Rightly, it has become natural for law schools, associations
and institutions to have their own periodicals. Again, to the delight of legal scholars,
many books on topics such as contract law, criminal law, labour law, and company law
are being published. But there are not similar efforts to index those articles and books or
to prepare bibliography based on systematic identification of topics and sub-topics.
Moreover, chronological publications of laws – mainly Negarit Gazeta that is invariably
used in all legal researches – do not promise ease of subject access to legal rules.

In this regard, the good beginnings of indexing that was carried out by the School of Law
at the early days of JEL’s publication deserve mention here. During those good times for
legal scholarship, the Journal’s editors had indices for JEL’s articles both by authors and
subject, indices of cases cited, and table of laws cited.75 It was unfortunate those good

75
Reference is made here to Journal of Ethiopian Law, Vol. IV No. 2 (1967) and Vol. VI No. 2 (1969).

19
starts were just that. From recent efforts, ad hoc bibliographies such as the Bibliography
on Ethiopian law by Peter H. Sand and Muradu Abdo are quiet encouraging.76 Still with
unmatched importance as a finding tool so far, the electronic copy of federal laws
compiled by Digital Ethiopia PLC is worth noting.77

Coming to other findings, issues could arise as to the existence of tools that assist legal
researchers in ascertaining the state of the law in Ethiopia. It is common knowledge
among academics and practitioners that there is no as such a systematic tool to identify
the present state of the law. There is also little in the survey findings that indicate the
availability of such a tool to the legal researcher. In the absence of such systematic tool, it
is common among legal scholars to depend on their personal skills to discover the state of
the law by searching through volumes of Negarit Gazet. It is also natural for Ethiopian
legal scholars to depend on common knowledge to determine the state of the law. For
example, researchers on constitutional law might benefit from the public knowledge that
the FDRE Constitution has never been amended and hence the text is the state of the law.
How far personal skills and common knowledge of the state of the law would be useful
for the present day sophisticated Ethiopian lawyer facing an increasing number of
constitutions, proclamations, regulations, directives, authoritative judicial and quasi-
judicial decisions, and legal publications?

Keeping with constant changes in laws is crucial. The legal scholar has to be able to
easily identify if a legal rule for a case is operational, repealed or modified. Presently, ad
hoc and private compilations, e.g. ‘as amended’, at law schools are common. But one
could also imagine of something similar to Shepardizing78 to Ethiopia. In tracing the state
of the law, it should be noted, the Consolidation works of the 1970’s by the School of
Law were admirable. 79 However, their relevance today is little more than historical for
the legal researcher engaged in everyday doctrinal research.

More questions could be posed not only about tools but the content of the law itself. How
can a legal scholar or a lawyer with an actual case, for example, locate federal
administrative directives in Ethiopia, which are mostly left unreported, especially
considering the total absence of consolidations of directives with annotations and subject
indices? In this connection, websites of government organs such as the National Electoral

76
Peter H. Sand and Muradu Abdo, “A Bibliography on Ethiopian Law”, Journal of Ethiopian Law, Vol.
XXIII No. 2, (2009), pp. 204-244
77
Digital Ethiopia PLC (Federal Negarit Gazeta from 1995 to 2006, CD-ROM, 2007)
78
Sheprdizing is a way to determine the subsequent history of a case by using Shepard’s Citators or similar
means. Garner, cited above at note 2. It is a hypothetical equivalent to Ethiopia of a publication that
sytematically reports the subsequent history of each provision of every Ethiopian legislation, which might
be a legislative repeal, amendment, judicial development or interpretation.
79
Faculty of Law of Haile Sellassie I University, Consolidated Laws of Ethiopia: An Unofficial
Compilation of National Laws in Effect as of September 10, 1969, Volumes I & II (1972)

20
Board of Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority, if sustained, are
good beginnings in ensuring ease of access of laws, directives and forms in their areas of
responsibility. By providing their sectoral policies, proclamations, regulations, directives,
programs, and strategies, websites of many other sectoral offices have already become
very useful in undertaking legal research.

Issues also routinely arise regarding laws of regional states. How does one discover laws
of national regional states, for example laws of Oromia National Regional State,
especially where comparative legal analysis is carried out? This is not a mere theoretical
question. For example, law students frequently encounter difficulties of finding family
codes of national regional states for their assignments in family law. The same applies to
their studies in land law. More important is the necessity of accommodating the country’s
federal system of governance in legal research and scholarship. It may not be the time or
will never be to contemplate the issuance of uniform laws for adoption by regional states,
owing to limited legislative mandates of national regional states; but there are still areas
on family law, land administration, constitutions, and even practices on which
comparative works could flourish. Legal studies as a result will have a few more reasons
to attempt consolidations of laws of regional states thereby ensuring ease of access of
regional laws at national level.

Out of curiosity, do legal researchers profit out of tools, if any, that systematically
organize and report legislative history of say parliamentary acts, which are usually
necessary in works of interpretation? It is stating the obvious to say that doctrinal legal
researches in Ethiopia usually rely to varied degree on preparatory materials. In the
surveyed research reports, appeal to preparatory works is common. However,
accessibility of these works poses a challenge. For the study of constitutional law, for
example, accessibility of minutes of the Constitutional Assembly – especially physical
and language accessibility – is in doubt. The same applies to the jurisprudence on
constitutional law in Ethiopia as determined and elaborated by constitutional review
organs, the principal being the House of Federation (HoF) of FDRE. At present, studies
on constitutional law in Ethiopia substantially depend on comparative analysis of foreign
and international materials. But such studies have to progress towards domestic
interpretation and application of the Constitution mainly by the HoF.80 In this regard, the
Journal of Constitutional Decisions, which publishes decisions of the HoF regarding
constitutional ‘interpretation’ and ‘questions’ is praiseworthy.81

80
Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, 1995, Articles 62, 83, & 84, Proc. No 1,
Neg. Gaz. Year 1 No. 1. The House of Federation is empowered to interpret the Constitution with the
assistance of its advisory organ, the Council of Constitutional Inquiry.
81
Office of the House of Federation, Journal of Constitutional Decisions, Vol. 1, No. 1, Hamle 2000 (E.C.)

21
With the interpretation power of the Cassation Division of the Federal Supreme Court, it
is now high time to think of devising systematic ways of case reporting for the Court’s
interpretative decisions.82 The legal researcher might think of ‘restatement’ of
interpretations by extracting interpretative rules found in the Court’s judgments.
Considering the bilingual nature of federal laws, there should also be an attempt to have
official or unofficial translation of the Court’s interpretative decisions. In this regard, the
publications of the Federal Supreme Court containing judgments of the Cassation
Division classified under major topics such as civil procedure, jurisdiction, contract, and
commercial law and its website containing cases and federal proclamations are
impressive.83

To end this section with an emerging contribution of private individuals for the doctrinal
study of law through the use of information technology is appropriate. At present, few
private Ethiopian websites and blogs have popped up. Some of them are owned and
administered by practicing lawyers, others by academicians and some by postgraduate
students. Their typical features include commentaries on recent legislations, opinion on
controversial legal issues, some allowing participation of guests, and some with legal
news. Interestingly, some of them supply federal laws and directives. Four of them
selected with the help of Google Search deserve mention here84: http://chilot.me/, a legal
blog which supplies proclamations, regulations, directives, teaching materials, some
journal articles and student papers; http://ethiopianlaw.com/blog, which provides brief
articles on variety of legal issues both in Amharic and English and a newsletter to
subscribers; http://www.ethiopian-law.com/, which, though in its early stage, is a
promising one in terms of breadth of coverage and organization of topics; and
http://www.abyssinialaw.com/index.php/home, which provides legal news and allows
other bloggers to lead discussions on topics of their choice.

These and other similar websites, as long as they comply with ethical standards of the
profession, have to be congratulated. One major disadvantage of these websites and blogs

82
In publications of cases, in addition to Ethiopia’s experience, one could take lessons from case reporting
in common law traditions. For example, in case reporting in the USA, components of a case include a
caption (with names of parties, docket number, attorneys), and syllabus and head-notes (a summary or
digest of a point of law decided by the court, opinion, and holding and dicta). See Cohen and Berring, cited
above at note 23, pp 26-34.
83
Other headings used in case publications of the Court include family, execution, criminal law, property,
extra-contractual liability, labour, bank and insurance, customs and taxes, agency, intellectual property and
miscellaneous others. The website of the Supreme Court (http://www.fsc.gov.et/) is the most elaborate from
those of other government offices in providing federal laws and the Courts’ judgments and useful for legal
research as long as it is accessible all the time and sustainable.
84
In the selection of these four blogs and websites, the writer used two queries ‘Ethiopian legal blog’ and
‘Ethiopian legal website’, one after the other, in Google Search. The first three search results were
identified for both queries, resulting in four of the websites identified here. The websites were checked for
content and ownership as they stood on the 25th of July 2012.

22
has to be acknowledged, however. As is the case with other blogs, writings and
commentaries appearing in those websites are not peer-reviewed and hence difficulties
arise in assessing the quality of opinion and positions expressed in those electronic
sources.

7.2 Empirical Research

The situation of empirical legal scholarship in Ethiopia is one area that methods of legal
research have to focus. From the survey, it is easy to see that empirical legal researches
are carried out routinely. While the number of empirical legal researches in journal
articles is small (the ratio is 1 to 15), the number of empirical researches by students
especially at graduate level is impressive. Seven out of ten legal researches in the masters
program are empirical while at undergraduate level it is 4 out of 10. Three hypotheses
might be made to explain the disparity: one is availability of a research fund, which
empirical researches need, to postgraduate students while the fund is very small to
undergraduate students, and almost null for publications in JEL. Two, postgraduate
students have in their curriculum empirical research methods while there is little guidance
on similar methods to contributions for JEL. The third explanation is availability of time
allocated outside the library. While students are given time with mandatory requirements,
for example a full semester for graduate students, writers for JEL might have little time to
spare for many of contributors are engaged in teaching or practice that involves full-time.

In addition to these three, inaccessibility of legal materials could arguably be another

factor that poses a challenge to empirical legal research in Ethiopia. Ease of access, for
example in terms of language and physical accessibility, to decided cases by Ethiopian
courts is crucial in empirical investigation of judicial practices. From this it is logical to
suspect that difficulty of access is one reason why empirical researches of court practices
usually study a couple of cases and profess empiricism. In one of the research reports
investigated, for example, only three cases were studied to show the practice. As already
indicated, the publication of cases by the Federal Supreme Court is one step forward
towards organized system of case reporting, providing an opportunity to researchers to
study the practice of the Supreme Court.

Another point worth noting of empirical research in Ethiopia is about methods that suit
empirical legal scholarship. Here it should be noted that considering the curricula of legal
research methods both at graduate and undergraduate levels, the tendency is to adapt
social science research methods to empirical legal studies. That should raise little
objection. However, the full integration of those methods as suiting legal issues and
topics has yet to come. The finding, as outlined in the next section, from the research
reports studied is that there is little to indicate the existence of strict observance of
empirical methods in empirical legal studies.

23
Regarding topics for research, there seems to be no limit on doctrines and institutions that
could be subjected to empirical scholarship. Commercial law, the judiciary,
intergovernmental issues in the context of Ethiopian federal system, land, institutional
frameworks, international law, human rights law, finance, customary law, family law,
and administrative tribunals were all subjected to empirical investigation in the research
reports examined. What probably are missing topics from the small number of
researchers examined are reform-oriented researches that are based on empirical studies
and interdisciplinary researches like law and sociology. While there are reform oriented
researches, they are based on comparative studies of international and foreign
experiences and hence mostly doctrinal studies. In interdisciplinary studies likewise,
there is little evidence showing the interest of legal scholars in carrying out researches on
law and economics or law and sociology in Ethiopian context.

8. Law Schools and Research Methods

As already indicated, the introduction of empirical research methods to Ethiopian law
schools at undergraduate level is a welcome phenomenon.85 Postgraduate students of law
are also taking research methods as a mandatory preparatory module at AAU. That seems
to be the reason why, as commented earlier, empirical studies are greater in number than
doctrinal studies at postgraduate level. But in light of rules of empirical research
methods, students’ works are far from valid. Although small deployment of empirical
methods might lure many of traditional legal academics not trained in empirical research,
students’ empirical works are mostly fraught with methodological errors such as using
unrepresentative samples, failure to identify population of the study, and use of improper
tools and techniques. These errors are happening on the face of students’ admission that
their works are empirically carried out with empirical methods.

In the surveyed research reports which are considered empirical, students have failed to
identify the population of their study, the methods of their sampling, and other necessary
elements in methods. Even in those cases where interviewees are identified, little
information is given for the reader to assess the authoritative nature of statements by
interviewees. In a couple of cases, blanket identification of interviewees as ‘authorities
concerned’ is made. But such wholesale assertions mean little to the reader in
examination of the persuasive nature of statements made. Moreover, there is little
indication in the empirical studies as to reasons, if any, in limiting any given sample size.
For example, in one empirical study to which a point is made above, three cases were the
only cases for the study, which offers no explanation as to why the research is limited to
these three. This is not to say that three cases are not in any way enough for empirical

85
In the US they have already started ranking law schools based on empirical research. Whatever rationale
and merits it has, such ranking implies the significance of empirical legal scholarship in the status of law
schools. On such ranking, see George, cited above at note 38, p. 150.

24
studies. It could be that three cases are the only cases in the country or in some way they
are representative of the whole set of relevant cases, in either case three would be the
right size for the study. But in the instant research report, the reader is not told if any
justifiable reasons existed to take the three as a representative sample. This brings up the
next issue of disclosure.

One crucial point that should be underlined regarding students’ empirical legal research is
the importance of disclosure. Often students performing empirical legal research, like
their counterparts in doctrinal research, are reluctant to disclose every step and details of
the process of their legal research. None of the empirical researches investigated for this
study have full disclosure of methodology. Some of them do not have any part in
methodology, except postgraduate students, who have allotted a section on methodology.
From those having a section on methodology, many do not provide information on their
sampling techniques, how representative the size of the sample is, features of the sample
selected, or list of questions for data gathering. This absence or lack of disclosure is not a
good sign for empirical studies. Unlike in doctrinal research, “publicity and transparency
in empirical inquiry play a crucial role” to verify the reliability of the findings.86
Disclosure for empirical research is like presenting documentary evidence and witnesses
to a court of law. Without observance of the norms of disclosure, empirical findings are
usually rejected in similar ways a court rejects claims without evidence. What is
important here is “methods and results underlying empirical claims must be made public
in detailed, [and in] reproducible terms.” 87 Hence students undertaking empirical legal
scholarship are duty bound to disclose the details of the process of their research; hence
supervision of such works has to enforce this duty.

As far as empirical research works of students are concerned, there are two choices:
either law schools should let students do empirical research in which case the schools
have to strictly enforce the rules on methods in empirical research lest their researches are
superficial and findings flawed; or deny students where they are not willing or able to

86
Gregory Mitchell, “Empirical Legal Scholarship as Scientific Dialogue”, 83 N.C. L. Rev. 167 2004-
2005, p. 180
87
For common rules of disclosure, the content, and format, see Id., pp. 202 and 203. For example,
disclosures of primary purpose of the investigation, statement of the problem, the phenomena to be
described, and/or specific hypotheses or theoretical propositions to be tested, the larger body of empirical
inquiry (comparable to literature review), disclosure of sufficient information to allow another investigator
to evaluate methods and verify results, including disclosure of research design employed and a description
of all variables studied, description of the sample of observations, the procedure for collecting data,
including sampling techniques and the identity of any archives used in the research, relevant distinguishing
characteristics of different data sources, time period during which observations were obtained from survey,
experimental, and/or field research, data sources that did not provide complete data or that had to be
eliminated after initiation of the study, explanation as to why complete data could not be obtained,
description of any apparatuses, instruments, or other tangible materials employed in the study, step-by-step
description of the procedure employed in execution of the research, the data collected and the results of
statistical analyses conducted on the data are identified as subjects of disclosure.

25
observe rules of empirical research in which case they should limit themselves to the
traditional legal research and analysis.

Issues of plagiarism at law schools also deserve some attention here. In today’s
scholarship, owing to ease of access of materials, concerns of plagiarism have been
voiced among academicians. Those concerns have already permeated law papers – law
theses and assignments. Plagiarism means roughly “presenting the ideas or data of others
as his or her own.”88 This trend has to be countered and remedial measures have to be put
in place. Since ignorance of what amounted to ‘plagiarism’ is said to be the principal
factor for the commission of the offence, clear instructions have to be given on
plagiarism in courses such as legal research methods. Moreover, while it will not be a
magic wand, systematic organization and retrieval of Ethiopian legal materials with the
help of finding tools might deter plagiarism. For example, if all law schools share topics
and themes of legal research outputs including students’ theses and legal periodicals,
detecting plagiarism in legal writings would be much easier.

9. Rules of Citation
Another important point in any research undertaking is the use of rules of citation. To
create uniformity among legal scholars, close to study of law, different rules of citation
were issued typical of them being the Blue Book in the USA. One undesirable attitude in
Ethiopian legal research in this regard is the mistaking of rules of citation for legal
research methods. Although the rules are part of rules of methods that should be followed
in research reporting, they are small, still necessary, part of research writing. Again
another undesirable attitude is the lack of attention accorded to rules of citation in
Ethiopian legal studies.

Two points could be raised here. One is whether the Ethiopian legal scholarship has rules
of citation, including for use in court pleadings. The other issue is whether those rules are
mandatory. For the first, there seems to be no consensus on rules of citation applicable to
all law schools, let alone legal scholarship. Even it is not clear which rules of citation
each school or department of law recommends for use by its students. The example of the
School of Law (AAU) is instructive. It is not unusual to find law students of the School
submitting the final draft of their thesis confessing, when asked, their ignorance of the
Rules of Citation of the Faculty of Law.89 That might arguably be attributed to students’

88
Vanderstoep and Johnston, cited above at note 51, pp 19&20
89
Faculty of Law, Book of Citation of the Faculty of Law (1965, unpublished). To the writer’s knowledge,
there has not been any attempt to update and popularize this valuable Book of Citation. Nevertheless, this
Book has been a useful guide in terms of content and form of citation for students of law. It has also
significantly contributed to the ‘rules of citation’ section of the present undergraduate teaching material on
legal research methods (cited above at note 1). The Book of Citation provides comprehensive guidance on
forms of citation for materials such as books, journal articles, newspapers and magazines, judicial
decisions, codes, legislations, and consolidations. If the Book is updated to take account of, among others,

26
lack of diligence. But are these Rules, which have not been updated, mandatory for
papers submitted to the School and if yes on what basis? This brings one to the second
issue. Are there compulsory rules of citation in legal scholarship in Ethiopia, referring to
the Blue Book or any other standard citation guide? While court-sanctioned rules of
citation are not unusual in some jurisdictions for memorials or pleadings presented to
courts, the Ethiopian lawyer need not ironically identify the legal rule in pleadings before
courts, let alone sources and proper citations.90 Should this trend continue or should at
least law schools be encouraged to provide express guidance on rules of citation for legal
research, with continuous updating of these rules? The citation guide of JEL in this
regard should be commended.

10. Conclusions and Recommendations

The question in doctrinal legal research is not whether the traditional lawyer has
methodology or not. Although legal scholars do not usually call them methodology, there
are powerful instruments of logic, rules of interpretation, legal analysis and synthesis, and
deductive and inductive reasoning for research works in doctrinal legal scholarship.
These are the instruments and skills that legal scholars mostly need in their everyday
activities as practitioners and academics of law. However, a noticeable challenge in
doctrinal legal scholarship in Ethiopia exists and it is the absence of finding tools, either
to find the law or literature on Ethiopian laws and institutions.

It should be admitted that it is neither necessary nor desirable to have complex finding
tools like in the American system. The volumes and kinds of laws and the Ethiopian legal
system do not yet justify such a complex scheme in the study and practice of law. But
still, one should agree, statutory materials and their updates are not easy to locate. There
are no consolidations, little subject access to legislations especially secondary
legislations, no systematic way of tracing later history of statutory provisions, and so on.
Statutes are not all. There are interpretations and practices produced by institutions and
scholars that should be investigated and studied. One has to be able to easily trace these
sources through finding tools such as indices of legal periodicals and digests of court
cases. The task of devising such tools awaits Ethiopian legal scholars.

the present state of legal publications in Ethiopia, the existence of federal and regional laws and courts, and
electronic sources, it could be very useful in setting standards of citation for legal scholarship in Ethiopia.
90
For example, consider the Civil Procedure Code that allows the submission of pleadings without the
necessity of citation of law let alone ‘rules of citation.’ In the Civil Procedure Code, Articles 80 and the
following, which require pleadings to be as near as may be to the appropriate Form, no legal arguments are
mandated let alone references and citations. Mention to the Federal Court Advocates' Code of Conduct
Council of Ministers Regulations No. 57/1999 (Article 7.1) may also be made: An Advocate shall have the
obligation, after evaluating the facts and evidences of the case, to assist his client reach on the proper
decision by giving him explanation based on the law as to the possible result or alternative results of the
matter, and the type and scope of representation that must be assumed to obtain the desired result. Although
legal explanation has to be given, there is no reference to citation or the exact source of law to be identified
to the client.

27
Since “contemporary legal scholarship has become pluralistic in its values, purposes,
methods, and perspectives,” 91 legal studies have already embraced empirical research
methods. The natural path is adaptation of research methods in the social sciences and
humanities. But the adaptation should be systematic and well informed. Simple copying
of methods without testing their relevance and application to legal doctrines and
institutions has to be discouraged. An ‘empirical’ legal scholarship of interviews with a
couple of judges or authorities with no due regard, for instance, to ‘population’ of the
study and ‘representative sampling’ is ‘mediocrity’ in empiricism and hence efforts have
to be exerted to incorporate valid empirical methods in legal studies.

It is here natural to raise the question of responsibility of tackling urgent issues of

Ethiopian legal scholarship identified in this article. Is it the responsibility of law schools,
legal academics, practitioners, or the government to tackle any of the issues and concerns
expressed in this article? Law schools – especially research and publication units – might
have interest in taking the initiative to devise networks among all stakeholders in
ensuring systematic publications of all primary and secondary legislations including
directives, notices, and standard forms, systematic reporting of current developments in
the law, and systematic organization of indices of Ethiopian legal periodicals, and indices
of law student research papers. Law schools could also encourage publication of books
like traditional commentaries, which should integrate the practice to develop national
jurisprudence on various subjects of law. Since law schools have little resources to carry
out either of these activities, they should be encouraged to seek financial assistance from
outside. These same activities could be carried out by bar or lawyers’ associations, which
might at the same time extend technical and financial assistance to law schools.

The Government’s role in these undertakings should not be underestimated. For example,
without government’s involvement, timely publication and retrieval of administrative
directives, rules, policies and notices is difficult. The role of the House of Peoples’
Representatives in official consolidations of federal proclamations is unavoidable. Again
technical support from government organs such as the Justice and Legal System Research
Institute (JLSRI) should be counted on.92 Among government organs, the legal mandate
of the Ministry of Justice in consolidation of federal and regional laws is also crucial. The
Ministry of Justice, which also controls the JLSRI, has the powers and duties, among

91
Kissam, cited above at note 4, p. 252
92
Justice and Legal System Research Institute Establishment Council of Ministers Regulations, 1997, Reg.
No. 22, Neg. Gaz. Year 4 No. 8. Given its legislative powers and duties such as undertaking legal studies
with a view to consolidating, updating and making laws accessible, publishing and distributing legal
information, and undertaking studies necessary for the promotion of legal education (Article 5), the
Institute, in cooperation with law schools, would be the ideal place to tackle many of Ethiopian legal
research issues raised in this article.

28
others, to “undertake legal reform studies and carry out the codification and consolidation
of federal laws; collect Regional State laws and consolidate same as necessary.”93

In the end two general concerted efforts are called for: one relates to finding tools namely
to assess the situation of finding tools in Ethiopia, carry out their comparative analysis in
varied jurisdictions, determine the necessity or desirability of those tools to Ethiopia, and
offer concrete suggestions for action; and two relates to empirical legal research namely
to assess the state of empirical legal scholarship in Ethiopia, carry out comparative
analysis of empirical methods among jurisdictions and disciplines, determine the promise
of empirical methods to the development of legal scholarship, and offer concrete
suggestions for action.

93
Definition of Powers and Duties of the Executive Organs of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Proclamation No. 691/2010, Article 16 (2)

29
 Note, Instructions and Questions for the Survey
Note
The survey, carried out with the help of two students at the School of Law, is made to assess
principal features of legal research at the School of Law of Addis Ababa University. Three
categories of research were identified: researches published in the Journal of Ethiopian Law,
researches by postgraduate students (as a requirement for LLM), and researches by undergraduate
students (as a requirement for LLB).

Note for the Student

Dear Student:
These questions are prepared to survey legal research tools and methods used at the School of
Law, Addis Ababa University. Two important concepts (doctrinal and empirical or non-doctrinal
legal research), which are useful in making the survey, are indicated. Once you take note of the
concepts, you may proceed with the survey.
1. Doctrinal Research is the conventional legal research, which might try to formulate legal
doctrines through analysis of legal rules; which might try to clarify the law; and which
focuses on black-letter law concerned with the prevailing state of the law, etc.
2. Empirical Legal Research is a kind of research common in the social sciences. Unlike
doctrinal legal research, the concern in empirical legal studies is usually about the actual
behavior of law and its institutions. In a typical empirical legal study, the empirical legal
scholar offers a hypothesis of a law or legal institution and then tests that hypothesis using
quantitative and qualitative techniques developed in the social sciences. The evidence may be
gathered by laboratory experiment or collected systematically from real world observation
(such as the actual observation of treatment of children in school to identify elements of
discrimination), field researches (such as on implementation of a certain legislative act), case
studies (e.g. studying court cases of an issue with documents and interviews with plaintiffs
and defendants), etc.

Instructions
1. Randomly select 5 theses (or senior papers) for each year from those submitted in the last 3
years. Overall you will select 15 senior papers. You could simply pick the first 5 in a given
list or you could take every 10 until you have 5 for each year or whatever is convenient for
you. What is important is you have to do it randomly. Do not under any circumstances
intentionally select or discard any thesis of the year under consideration. [Similar
instructions were given to all the three categories of research reports. The instructions for
graduate and undergraduate researches are almost identical. For publications in the Journal of
Ethiopian Law, this instruction reads: Randomly select 5 issues of JEL or you could simply
take the last 5 issues of JEL. The study should be limited to articles (and not book/case
reviews or opinion). Each issue is likely to have 4 or 5 articles and answers to questions
below should be limited to each one of them]
2. Afterwards, identify/write down:
a. Topic of the thesis; and
b. Whether it is doctrinal or empirical [you might need to go through the thesis quickly
to identify this point or you may as well need to first answer questions 3 or 4 before
you come to the conclusion that the thesis is doctrinal or empirical];

30
 c. If you find the paper to be doctrinal, you would answer questions under number three
(3) and if you find the paper to be empirical, you would answer questions under
number four (4) below.

3. If the thesis is doctrinal:

a. Does the author use Ethiopian (Ethiopian only!) legal research tools such as
consolidations, encyclopaedias, CDs, case finders or digests, etc? If yes, identify the
kind of tool or tools the thesis is using. [You could look for legal research tools in the
bibliography and footnotes];
b. Does the thesis mention how the author became aware of the law or judicial
decision? For example, does the paper cite a newspaper or magazine to locate a
certain legislation or court decision?
c. Does the author mention how s/he came to the conclusion that the law s/he analyzes
is the authority or the state of the law at a given time? That is, how does the author
know if the law is not repealed or amended?
d. Does the author use foreign legal research tools such as consolidations,
encyclopaedias, CDs, case finders or digests, etc? If yes, identify any one or two of
such foreign legal research tools!

4. If the thesis is empirical, identify the following:

a. Does it have a part in the first chapter or in the introduction discussing methodology
or methods? [Clues could be found in use of terms like primary and secondary
sources, interview and questionnaire, taking samples, random/non-random sampling,
etc.]
b. Does the author detail the kind of interview, questionnaire, focus group discussion or
any other kind of empirical investigation s/he has carried out?
c. Does the author provide a list of questions s/he used to gather data? [This is usually
found at the end of the thesis as annex.]
d. Does the author detail how many respondents/interviewees s/he selected for the
research?
e. Related to‘d’, what are the justifications for the selection in terms of size and
qualities of respondents/interviewees? [For example, does the author provide
explanation as to how and why s/he selected the number of people for interview or
response? Another example, does the author use any kind of statistical formula in the
selection of the respondents?]
f. Does the author detail the sampling technique such as random and/or non-random
sampling and why?
g. Does the author provide background of the study population or the sample or the
people s/he studied? [The subjects of the study could be courts, judges, public
prosecutors, etc.]

Dear Student:
You could provide any information or opinion you think is relevant to the study.
I thank you for taking your time in carrying out the survey.

31