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MethodStatistics1,836 AI & ML1,661 Decision Sciences932 Research Methods1,354 Measurement1,745 Causal & Evidence532 Research Practice118

30 methods in LawClear

Real methods matching your filter.

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forensic psychology

BHS

The Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) is a 20-item self-report instrument developed by Aaron Beck and colleagues (1974) to measure the degree of hopelessness and pessimism about the future in adolescents and adults. It is grounded in Beck's cognitive theory of depression and suicide and is widely used in clinical, psychiat

Case Law Analysis

Case law analysis is a systematic method for examining judicial decisions to identify binding legal rules, evolving doctrines, and interpretive trends. Rooted in the common law tradition of stare decisis, it requires the researcher to locate the ratio decidendi — the binding reasoning — of each decision, distinguish it

political economy

Central Bank Independence Index

The central bank independence index of Cukierman, Webb, and Neyapti (1992) is the foundational quantitative measure of how insulated a monetary authority is from political control. It reads the central bank's statute and codes dozens of legal provisions into four groups — the appointment, tenure, and dismissal of the c

Comparative Doctrinal Legal Research

Comparative doctrinal legal research systematically identifies, expounds, and compares the legal rules, principles, and doctrines governing the same problem across two or more jurisdictions. It combines the internal rigour of doctrinal analysis — mapping the authoritative sources of a single legal system — with the ext

Comparative Legal Analysis

Comparative legal analysis is a structured research method that examines how two or more legal systems — whether national, regional, or supranational — address a common legal problem. By placing rules, doctrines, and judicial decisions side by side, researchers identify convergences, divergences, and the underlying soc

international relations

Content Analysis of Treaties

Content analysis of treaties is the systematic, rule-governed coding of the text and design features of international agreements — their obligations, precision, delegation, enforcement, flexibility, and substantive provisions — to study how treaties are written and what explains variation in their design. It applies th

Crime Linkage Analysis

Crime linkage analysis is a forensic method that determines whether a series of crimes were committed by the same offender based on behavioral and modus operandi (MO) similarities. Developed systematically by Craig Bennell and colleagues in the early 2000s, crime linkage applies statistical and similarity-matching tech

Critical Case Law Analysis

Critical case law analysis applies the theoretical tools of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) to the examination of judicial decisions. Rather than accepting legal reasoning at face value, this approach interrogates how courts construct legal arguments, whose interests those arguments serve, and how ideological commitments

Critical Doctrinal Legal Research

Critical doctrinal legal research combines traditional black-letter legal analysis — systematically mapping the rules, principles, and doctrines found in statutes and case law — with the evaluative lens of critical legal theory. Rather than treating legal doctrine as a neutral or self-contained system, it interrogates

Doctrinal Legal Research

Doctrinal legal research is the foundational methodology of legal scholarship. It systematically identifies, reads, and analyses authoritative legal sources — statutes, case law, constitutional texts, and regulations — to describe, explain, and critique the content and internal logic of legal doctrine. By working withi

Evaluation-focused legal content analysis

Evaluation-focused legal content analysis is a systematic method for examining legal texts — statutes, regulations, court decisions, contracts, or policy documents — with an explicit evaluative purpose: to assess whether and how well legal instruments achieve specified goals, standards, or values. It combines the struc

forensic science

Forensic Likelihood Ratio

The Forensic Likelihood Ratio (LR) is a Bayesian framework for quantifying the weight of forensic evidence relative to two competing propositions — typically the prosecution and defence hypotheses. Formally developed and systematised by Colin Aitken and Franco Taroni in their 2004 Wiley monograph, the LR expresses how

Geographic Profiling

Geographic profiling is a spatial analysis method used in forensic investigation to locate offenders based on the locations of their crimes. Developed by David Canter in 1994, it combines geostatistics, probability theory, and crime pattern analysis to identify high-probability crime origin zones. The method has been w

forensic psychology

HCR-20v3

The HCR-20v3 is a structured professional judgment framework developed by Douglas, Hart, and colleagues for the assessment of risk for violence among adolescents and adults in mental health, criminal justice, and forensic settings. Published in 2013, it represents the third version of one of the most widely validated r

Legal Content Analysis

Legal content analysis applies the systematic procedures of content analysis to legal texts — statutes, regulations, judicial opinions, treaties, and legal commentaries — in order to identify patterns, themes, and trends across a corpus of legal material. It bridges qualitative legal scholarship and quantitative social

Legal Judgment Prediction

Legal judgment prediction is a machine learning approach that forecasts court decisions and judicial outcomes based on case features, legal precedent, and judicial characteristics. Pioneered by Daniel Katz and colleagues in 2017 with their celebrated U.S. Supreme Court prediction model, this method applies supervised l

Longitudinal comparative legal analysis

Longitudinal comparative legal analysis examines how legal rules, doctrines, or institutions develop and diverge across two or more legal systems over an extended period. By combining the spatial dimension of comparative law with the temporal dimension of longitudinal research, it captures not just differences between

forensic psychology

LSI-R

The Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) is a 54-item assessment instrument developed by Andrews and Bonta (1995) to measure offender risk level and criminogenic needs (dynamic risk factors related to criminal behavior) in criminal justice populations. It is grounded in the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model of o

forensic psychology

NAS-PI

The Novaco Anger Scale and Provocation Inventory (NAS-PI) is a comprehensive self-report assessment instrument developed by Raymond Novaco (2003) to measure dispositional anger and anger provocation in adolescents and adults. It integrates cognitive-behavioral theory of anger and emotional regulation, serving clinician

Network Analysis of Case Law

Network analysis of case law applies graph-theoretic and network science methods to study the structure and dynamics of legal precedent systems. Developed systematically by James Fowler and colleagues in 2011, this method treats legal citations as directed edges in a network where nodes represent court decisions and ed

forensic psychology

PCL-SV

The Psychopathy Checklist Screening Version (PCL-SV) is a 12-item assessment tool developed by Hart, Cox, and Hare (1995) to screen for psychopathic personality traits in adolescents and adults. It is a brief alternative to the full 20-item Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), designed for rapid screening in correcti

futures foresight studies

PESTEL Macro-Environmental Scanning

PESTEL macro-environmental scanning is a structured audit of the forces in an organization's wider operating environment, organized into six factor classes: Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal. Unlike open-ended horizon scanning, PESTEL is typically run as a deliberate audit that enumer

migration studies

Residual Method for Unauthorized Population

The residual method estimates the size of the unauthorized migrant population by subtraction: it takes the total foreign-born population counted in a census or large survey and removes the part that can be accounted for as legally resident, treating whatever remains as the unauthorized residual. Robert Warren and Jeffr

Risk Terrain Modeling

Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) is a geospatial crime prediction method that identifies high-risk locations by analyzing environmental and geographic features that attract or facilitate crime. Developed by Joel Caplan, Lichen Kennedy, and James Miller in 2011, RTM bridges environmental criminology theory with geographic in

religious studies

Ritual Density Coding

Ritual density coding is a method for analyzing religious rituals by coding them on two key dimensions - how often they are performed (frequency) and how emotionally intense or dysphoric they are (arousal) - in order to locate a tradition along Harvey Whitehouse's imagistic-doctrinal continuum. In his 2004 book Modes o

forensic psychology

SAPROF

The Structured Assessment of Protective Factors for Violence Risk (SAPROF) is a 17-item structured professional judgment tool developed by de Vogel, de Ruiter, Bouman, and colleagues (2012) to identify protective factors and strengths in individuals undergoing violence risk assessment. It complements risk assessment in

forensic psychology

SPJ Framework

The Structured Professional Judgment (SPJ) framework represents a contemporary approach to forensic risk assessment that synthesizes clinical judgment with empirical evidence of risk factors. Rather than producing a numerical score, SPJ guides clinicians through systematic evaluation of case-specific evidence to arrive

forensic psychology

SPS

The Suicide Probability Scale (SPS) is a 36-item self-report instrument developed by John Cull and William Gill (1990) to assess suicide risk, hopelessness, suicide ideation, negative self-evaluation, and hostility in adolescents and adults. It provides a multidimensional profile of suicide-related cognitions and emoti

forensic psychology

Static-99R

The Static-99R is an actuarial risk assessment instrument designed to estimate the likelihood of sexual recidivism among adult male sex offenders. Originally developed as the Static-99 by Hanson and Thornton (2000) and revised in 2009 as the Static-99R by Hanson, Helmus, and Thornton, it remains one of the most widely

forensic psychology

VRAG

The Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) is an actuarial instrument developed by Harris, Rice, and Quinsey (1993) to estimate the probability of violent recidivism among adult male offenders released from forensic psychiatric hospitals. It represents one of the earliest empirically validated violence prediction tools a