Digging into legal archaeology: a methodology for case study research

Traditional legal scholarship has been dominated by doctrinal analysis. When cases are analysed, attention has commonly focused upon the legal issues, judicial reasoning, and case outcome. However, alternative approaches can lead to new or different conclusions. Legal archaeology is a type of micro-level case study research that examines a case in its socio-historical context, using mainly original sources, to construct a more detailed case narrative than that presented in the case report. Rather than trying to fit newly discovered evidence to pre-existing doctrine or respond to a research question, legal archaeology focuses on the subjective, variable nature of cases and captures their uniqueness. Reflecting on a legal archaeology study previously undertaken by the author in addition to existing works, this article emphasizes the importance of legal archaeology as a tool for case study research and suggests a four-stage approach for the process of investigation that could be replicated by scholars in future.