Hello Scholars, does anyone know what it means for a research topic to be amenable to scientific study using a quantitative approach?

According to the very narrow definition of 'scientific' you mention, the only 'scientific' method suitable to philosophical inquiry would be 'experimental philosophy' - which is rather soft sociology aimed at testing intuitions. But I am not sure that such a method is of great philosophical interest.

When we speak regarding legal philosophy ,it is difficult & also inconvenient to draw  a line of demarcation as generally legal constitutes to parties positive & negative direction .

To my understanding one legal code is that a person is innocent unless he proves guilty .During my earlier years i got an opportunities to read an article that in one of cases a culprit for want of required legal proofs he was acquitted slice by the judicial court .

The judge was sincere honest,with and very understanding power of implementation & also he was a philosophical & spiritual minded .Coincidentally in the early morning while taking a walk ,he casual came across the said culprit observing him to commit  a crime once again the said culprit was brought in the same court & judge was confused as this time he did not like to get free to said accuse.

He therefore call him in his room & talked about the earlier accusation & confirm to judge that i had earlier committed all these offences .

Judge in a very kindly voice with good feelings advised him to confess your offences before the court so that you may receive the punishment .The said culprit accepted advise of the judge .

I felt that time that this is certainly a philosophical  approach  of the judge .

I have taken liberty to quote this incident & i believe that legal professional personnel should maintain ethics-honest approach & in the interest of the social justice he should follow the principal of moral code ,Truth & justice.

This is only my personal opinion pl

Thank you both Nicolas and Rohit for your quick answer.  I'll wait a few more comments to pronounce what I think.

We talked about something similar in class while studying the european directives regulating research. According to what we learned, the value of any kind of research (so I guess also in the field of legal philosophy) is determined by its reproducibility.

In order to achieve that, the stress was put upon the processes of qualification and validation (which are better explained in the GMP/GLP laws). So if I were to advise a general "scientific method" that could be applied also to legal philosophy it would be a general process of quality management system. In other words I'm suggesting that you qualify all the components that in any direct or indirect way lead to the conclusion of your research and that you validate the process used to reach it.

I'm not sure if this fits with what you had in mind, because I'm not really sure how a research in legal philosophy is made. But I thought that it could be useful to point out what we learned in class as I feel that it has some value to it.

I also would like to attach the texts of the GLP/GMP laws but I only have the italian version.

Loris Casali, thanks for your answer. His experience is interesting for reflection. I have proficiency in Italian, if you want to send stuff, I thank you in advance.

Empirical research need not be mathematical (or "quantitative").  Sociology and psychology both recognise the validity of qualitative empirical research, such as interviews.

Bearing in mind that science does not prove things true, but only proves things untrue:  The key question is what philosophical concept you wish to investigate and whether it is possible to prove it wrong via empirical research. I cannot, for example, invalidate the principle in Natural Law Theory that material reality has inherent moral status via empirical research.  On the other hand, I can test consequentialist (utilitarian) principles by examining their consequences on society via standard sociological research.  Similarly, I can test procedural or positive law justifications of specific laws via empirical historical methods to see if correct procedures were followed.  But I could not test the general philosophical principle of Positive Law Theory that all laws are just solely on the basis of being enacted via correct legislative procedure.

Thus you can only empirically test those aspects of philosophy of law which have direct interaction with empirical data.  You cannot subject more general philosophical principles or those based on metaphysical justifications to empirical analysis.  I think this principle is true of many branches of philosophy, which is why the discipline is not reducible to scientific analysis.

So I think the answer is to reverse the question:  "Which aspects of legal philosophy are  suitable for scientific research?"  Once you have answered that, I expect the methodology will be self-evident.

Read any of later work by Larry Laudan:

Truth, error, and criminal law

Commentary: Science at the bar—causes for concern

I haven't read this but it looks interesting (and can vouch for many of the contributors):

Heuristics and the Law

edited by Gerd Gigerenzer, Christoph Engel

Also this may not be exactly what you're looking for but it's very comprehensive and is great for framing the current state of knowledge between science and law in terms of their different epistemological demands

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/13163/reference-manual-on-scientific-evidence-third-edition

Thank you both Brandt and Roger for your answer. 

To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. (Rules for the study of natural philosophy", Newton transl 1999, pp. 794–6, after Book 3,The System of the World.)

to apply this in the legal field you need to do:

you should base your research on statistical method i.e data. you collect data, analyze data and measure them and then apply principle of reasoning to them.

for example: if you investigate the questions like : what is the relationship between law and morality? you form hypotheses about the nature of relationship and  you conduct a survey  and collect data. then you analyze data and draw inference from them. this way your research will be scientific because scientists do research this way.

another example: suppose you want to know why people rape? again you formulate hypotheses, conduct a survey on rapists, collect and analyze data and draw inference. that way your research will be scientific.

Physics is based on science, law is not. Law is a defiantly human process subject to the foibles of our specie.  The right answer is you cannot verify legal philosophy with the scientific method.  The common law is rooted in history, applying past cases as precedents for future decions where there are similar facts. History is not science and is not amenable to the scientific method as well.  Politics is the source of law, notwithstanding the rubric "political science" political phisophy like law and history is not verifiable with the scientific method.  Economics plays a role in judicial theory.  My experience teaching law and economics suggests economic theory is only descriptive generally and not the basis for science. Human intentions in law are too complex to capture with a mathematical formula. In the end law is more art than science according to many great jurists of the past. I hope you leave room for doubt about your ability to use the scientific method for law.

This is not a direct answer, but a suggestion about looking at another kind of reasoning. Any inquiries based on empirical or measurable evidence are likely to provide partial, even contradictory, conclusions. So, you will also need to look around at all the appropriate kinds of evidence, and decide what works in this particular case, case-by-case. You might be interested in looking at The Abuse of Casuistry, a history of moral reasoning by Jonsen and Toulmin (1988).

I would suggest reading. The logic of Scientific discovery by Karl Popper. He has some useful philosophical tools and approaches which  may help you.

Hi Marcelo,

I would recommend looking up relationships between Peircean abduction and legal reasoning.  The following is a flavor of what Peirce wrote about over 100 years ago.  He set up an architectonic for scientific reasoning:

Modern methods have created modern science; and this century, and especially the last twenty-five years, have done more to create new methods than any former equal period. We live in the very age of methods. Even mathematics and astronomy have put on new faces. Chemistry and physics are on completely new tracks. Linguistics, history, mythology, sociology, biology, are all getting studied in new ways. Jurisprudence and law have begun to feel the impulse, and must in the future be more and more rapidly influenced by it…

[I intend] to make a philosophy like that of Aristotle, that is to say, to outline a theory so comprehensive that, for a long time to come, the entire work of human reason, in philosophy of every school and kind, in mathematics, in psychology, in the physical sciences, in history, in sociology, and in whatever other department there may be, shall appear as the filling up of its details. The first step toward this is to find simple concepts applicable to every subject [for example: one, two, three; sign, object, interpretant; chance, law, habit-taking or continuity…

~Peirce, ca. 1900

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/term/abduction

Also, here is a visual argument with some quotes:

http://www.meetup.com/The-Chicago-Philosophy-Meetup/photos/25952479/

The logic of law is experience not science.  Therefore there is no scientific method for researching legal philosophy.  Similarly there is no scientific method for researching  art, music or  dance.  There may be a correlation however in the history of art or music with the history of legal philosophy.  As art moved from classical to impressionist to realism so there are similar periods evident in the development of legal philosophy. While teaching law at the University of British Columbia many years ago one of my students was an art major  undergraduate and she wrote her paper connecting art history with the history of legal philosophy.  The paper was very impressive and informative..  I suggest using an interdisciplinary approach not the scientific method for research of legal philosophy.  

Dear Marcelo 

this is a quantitative reductionist empiricist behavioral definition of scientificity ,  any qualitative research approach like field study,  case study,  observation, interviews

based on symbolic interactionism and phenomenology would be a scientific research in the context of law.

here's the supporting publication:

https://sisis.rz.htw-berlin.de/inh2012/12424693.pdf

James,

I would argue that Peirce's intention was to make best use of that experience by funneling it into a logical form:

"The development of my ideas has been the industry of thirty years. I did not know as I ever should get to publish them, their ripening seemed so slow. But the harvest time has come, at last, and to me that harvest seems a wild one, but of course it is not I who have to pass judgment. It is not quite you, either, individual reader; it is experience and history (1.12)."

~ Peirce, from Psillos, An Explorer upon Untrodden Ground: Peirce on Abduction

...But there remains this issue of who has rights to that name, "the scientific method".  Someone should.  Perhaps the commens? 

http://www.commens.org/about

Rahimi,

I find nothing in Marcelo’s definition of the scientific method that says it is a “quantitative reductionist empiricist behavioral definition of scientificity”.  In fact, the things you talk about can be given formal descriptions where good ones are expected to be adapted and sustained. 

You also make a good point about how we shouldn’t ignore the different values we hold regarding interpretation of signs. 

“In spite of the often confusing plurality of terms, it is reasonably clear that mediation, which is almost equivalent to Peirce's third category (see, in particular, CP 1.328 [c. 1894]; CP 2.88 [1902]; PPM 193 f. [1903]; NEM 4:308), is the most generic way of characterising semiosis.

That is, whatever else semiotic representation, determination, and communication may turn out to be, they can plausibly be construed as modes or aspects of mediation. In semeiotic, mediation is intimately associated with the fundamental semiotic relationship, taken as a triadic whole; the mediating sign is something that brings two other semiotic subjects into a certain kind of irreducible relation. Or, expressed differently, the sign mediates between the object and the interpretant (EP 2:410 [1907])…

…Peirce undeniably characterises his theory of signs as a scientific undertaking, but that does not mean that semeiotic would study nothing but science; Peirce himself tends to view practically everything that can in any sense be investigated in semiotic terms (see SS 85 f. [1908]).

~ Mats Bergman, “Reflections on the role of the communicative sign in semeiotic”.