2.1 Characteristics of Different Types of Topics

Module 2

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  What Are the Characteristics of the Following TYPES of TOPICS When It Comes to Answering These Questions?

  • What is the potential readership, your audience beyond the supervisor? Will this be a large or a small group, with or without specialized knowledge of the subject and its surroundings?
  • Over the course of weeks, months, and maybe years (if this is a doctoral dissertation), will you be able to maintain interest in or even enthusiasm for the topic?
  • How much has been written already about this topic? How many books and articles and other materials will you have to read and evaluate to be fully aware of the "prior art", to know what has already been said and does not need to be said again? How easy or difficult is it going to be to say something new and interesting about the topic?
  • Can you access the "prior art" in geographic and linguistic terms or will you have to rely on secondary descriptions of sources that you cannot get or cannot read? Can you evaluate all relevant "prior art" in the time you have available?
  • Do you have the necessary background knowledge or foundational knowledge in a field in order to write about a highly specialized issue in that field? Might you make basic mistakes because you lack those foundations although you have learned everything about the specialized issue?
  • Is there a significant risk that other researchers will be working on the same topic at the same time and beat you to the finish line? In other words, if a topic is currently widely debated, what are the chances that one or more articles, books, symposium issues, etc. will be published before you will finish and that they will say much of what you were also going to say?

Think about these questions when looking at TYPES of TOPICS:

  • Historic (deals with ancient history of limited or no connection to the present time, e.g. 'The Legal Status of Slaves in Ancient Rome")
  • Contemporary but completed (deals with modern day issues that have occurred relatively recently but do not continue to evolve, e.g. "Re-Assessment of the 1988 Danish Bottles Decision of the European Court of Justice")
  • Contemporary and current (deals with current but relatively static topics, e.g. "Analysis of Arguments For and Against the Chevron Doctrine")
  • Currently in flux (deals with current topics that are currently evolving, e.g. "New Ideas for Gun Control Laws in the United States")
  • Narrow  vs.  Broad (an example of a narrow topic would be "The Calculation of Interest Under Article 78 of the CISG"; an example of a broad topic would be "International Support for Court Reform in Post-Soviet Transition Countries - How Did We Do?")
  • Descriptive  vs.  Analytical (some topics are already formulated in a way that encourages mostly descriptive work, for example "The Evolution of the Powers of the European Parliament"; by simply re-formulating the topic, a more analytical approach is encouraged and promised to the reader, for example "Is There Still a Democratic Deficit in the European Union?")
  • Monodisciplinary  vs. Multi- or interdisciplinary (the former are narrowly focused topics within a clearly defined area of law, for example "Arguments for the Early Release of Non-Violent Drug Offenders After the De-criminalization of Marijuana"; the latter require at the very least an analysis reaching into different areas of law and, preferrably, into sciences outside of the law, for example "How to Address Prison Overcrowding with Legal, Sociological and Economic Tools")
  • Comparative law (seeks to find innovative solutions to legal problems by looking how other countries or legal systems have solved or attempted to solve the problems, for example "Fixing Excessive Delays in Courts - What Can We Learn from Approaches Taken in Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand?")
  • Foreign law (analyzes a particular problem in a foreign jurisdiction and how it has been deal with, for example "The Powers of the Avocat Général at the French Cour de Cassation")
  • Empirical (relies on data that may still have to be collected rather than law and legal arguments, for example "The Legitimacy of the Institution of Special Counsel in the Wake of Robert Mueller's Investigation of President Trump")
  • Policy oriented (seeks to achieve a change in law or policy, for example "Proposals for the Reform of Campaign Finance Laws in Brazil") 
  • Academic  vs.  Practice oriented (a highly academic topic is largely addressed to an academic audience and has few, if any, practical applications, for example "Strengths and Weaknesses of Prof. Smith's Theory of Green Lobbying"; by contrast, a practice oriented topic is addressed to practioners and includes fewer, if any, references to academic theories, for example "A Step-by-Step Guide for the Drafting of Partnership Agreements Under the Chinese Partnership Enterprise Law of 2007")

N.B.: A topic can fit into more than one category, for example it can be at the same time empirical, broad and comparative.