Scenario Analysis as a Method in Legal Science
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Andreas Moberg
Department of Law, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg Sweden
andreas.moberg@law.gu.se
Author(s):
Many projects in legal science deal with questions surrounding the strengths and weaknesses of a particular system of laws and regulations. This type of legal research often starts with questions inspired by and derived from real events taking place in society, which then are extrapolated into more general hypothetical questions formulated and discussed in light of the current framework of legal rules and obligations. The results sought are often focussed on finding deficiencies and gaps in the web of legal obligations.
This paper aims to draw on experiences and knowledge from other research disciplines where scenario analysis has a been an established method for decades, in order to develop a method where the system of legal obligations can be tested by hypothetical events, similar to the way described above, byt fundamentally different on one vital point - the research question will be a result of the scenario analysis, instead of a result of what the individual researcher chose as an interesting topic.
The difference may appear a small one, but it is significant in terms of how transparent the methodology can be as well in terms of intersubjectivity and researcher's bias. The difficulty of dealing with researcher's bias in legal science has always been a huge challenge, as the results of legal research has a direct impact on the norms and the application of norms in the legal system. The way to deal with the normative implications of legal scientific analysis is to minimize the researcher's own normative bias. It is the ambition of this project to contribute to legal science by adapting scenario analysis for legal research.
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