Kristin van Zwieten on Doing Doctrinal Legal Research

Dwi'n ddechrau'n ddechrau'n ddechrau'n ddechrau'n ddechrau'n ddechrau' anico ffandru anedita o'r The Oxford Business Law Blog. Prad tech iawn pwpleis o oxfordd, pystynwyrs i'r John Collier fellow i'r Trinity Hall Cambridge. So, pystyn, can we get the ball rolling by you telling us a little bit more about the sort of legal research that you do? Well, thank you very much to Linda and Rania for having me on this fantastic podcast series. It's a real privilege for me to be able to join in to talk about the research that I do and the methodology that's involved. So, as Linda said, I'm a professor of law and finance and like others who work in the field of law and finance, my interest is in understanding how laws and legal systems develop over time and with what effect on the way in which markets develop. So, at the moment, I work mostly on an area of law that's understood to have an important effect on access to finance for entrepreneurial projects, namely business bankruptcy law and how business bankruptcy laws are designed and operate can be expected. We have good reason to think can be expected to affect investment incentives ex ante and that's why people who work in law and finance are interested in this part of business and commercial law. But I'm also interested in and work on other aspects of business and commercial law and again, I'm primarily interested in understanding how and why these rules came to be in the form that they are and in understanding their effects on the way in which markets develop in a world in which sophisticated players and rule makers are in a kind of dynamic game of rule production, bargaining in the shadow of the rules once they're made and then revising those rules. And I have a special interest in understanding how judge made rules of commercial law evolve in common law jurisdictions and I have a number of current projects on this, including but not limited to in relation to bankruptcy law. So, that's sort of what I'm interested in but I think this puts me in a bit of an awkward position in methodological terms because the big questions that I'm really interested in that motivate my scholarly life are ones that I think I'm quite poorly positioned to answer with my skill set because I'm not an economist and I'm not an historian. So, I think what I have, you know, is that doctrinal scholar is what Steven Smith called "access to the law's self-understanding" so those concepts and conventions and categories that the law uses to organize and explain itself. That's what I understand to be sort of the unique asset of the legally trained person. But clearly having that skill set only gives me a very partial insight into the question of why legal systems are as they are today. For that, I think you need social legal methods and historical methods among other things. I think with this skill set practically no insight into the real world effects of rules. So, I think, you know, those who've been trained to use primary sources of law in accordance with the conventions that govern their use by insiders and I said this in a recent talk I gave in Berlin, I think we're in a very paradoxical position actually because we are trained to be able to use sources in a way that puts us in a great position to influence the development of the system, to actually influence how rules develop. But at the same time, I think we're probably worst positioned to be able to assess whether what we do and what we advocate for is in the end going to produce something that's socially desirable. So, in practice, I try to overcome the limitations of my expertise by augmenting my internal perspective with insights from other disciplines, especially from economics. And I think most business commercial law scholars who are trained in doctrinal methods do this. So, they augment the internal perspective with perspectives from other disciplines. And I also try to collaborate with others including economists. So, my ongoing project on COVID-19 and Insolvency is a collaboration with Horst Ardenweller in our faculty and with Oren Susman from the side business school at Oxford. And I also have another project on the evolution of common law rules that I'm doing with Susman who's a financial economist. That's a really great introduction. Thank you so much. I think it really sets the seat nicely. So, one of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you today is that you've run an advanced doctrinal methods caused an effective law for our research students. And I was looking over the outline of that recently. And you say at some point, method is often treated as implicit or intuitive. I always start with doctrinal methods when I'm teaching sociological research 'cause I want to know what skills lawyers think that they bring to the table. And I think it's a very common response to get from people that they weren't really taught. Necessarily, how to analyse a case that it is implicit or intuitive. So, I thought that statement was really important. And I remember my own tutoring college telling me that it was only difficult to be the first 400 cases that I'll put out. You just got used to it. The sort of process it was most is by standing next to people that knew it. So, I think there's so much in that very simple statement that you made. I wondered if you could unravel that a little bit. And could you tell us more about how you teach people about analysing a case? I think you'd call it advanced doctrinal. Advanced may be a generous description, but advanced in contradiction to the introduction to doctrinal methods. We all do as I'm first year D Phil students. So yeah, I think what you've said is absolutely right. I don't think we really formalise in any way in our discussion with undergraduate law students, at least in this jurisdiction. We don't tell them in formal terms about the analytical toolkit that they're going to acquire. We have a kind of immersion strategy, don't we? Where we kind of drop you in a pool of 1,000 cases. And it's expected that as you emerge, come up for air, having immersed yourself in those cases. And I think this is what we're actually trying to do. You will have acquired a sense of how it is that a judge would use those sources. And so the reason that our students are asked to read hundreds of cases is so that in time, they can come to learn how it is that a judge would handle those sources. Because it's only by doing that that you're able to then do the creative work of marshalling those sources to make a prescription about how those rules should be developed, how a particular doctrine should be developed in the future. That is of a kind that is capable of being accepted by an insider. I agree with you, we don't often talk about this. We instead think that our students will essentially learn by doing and by reading lots and lots of cases in which judges have used the analytical tools that insiders to systems use, the drawing of distinctions, the differentiating between higher level principles and lower level more fixed rules. The careful treatment of court hierarchy, the constraints on judicial innovation. So we know, I think, as established scholars, when it is that, for example, the UK Supreme Court is likely to say in an area of private law, this would be a bridge too far for the court to make this change. But how is it that we know that? That is, in my view, primarily through an immersion in the cases that over time gives you a sense of the constraints that courts have developed to govern their relationship with Parliament. And I think that relationship has important differences across common law jurisdictions so that you will not necessarily be able to answer this question for every Supreme Court in every common law jurisdiction. But you might be able to make a plausible claim about the limits of innovation in the common law system in which you've been immersed. Now, that doctrinal methods workshop series that you've talked about, what we do there is, we try to learn more about our own method in our projects by dissecting the method used in some texts that are considered to be seminal texts in the field. We do a private law text, a private international law text, a public law text, and a public international law text. And students read a non-trivial extract in 100 pages or something from each text. And then they're asked to reflect and present in response to some questions. And those questions are essentially around, to whom is this claim directed? Is it directed to outsiders, to the system or to insiders? And the system, those who are involved in the dynamic game of rule production? And if it's, as I think is true for all the texts we do, directed to insiders, how is that claim developed? So what use is made of the sources to develop that claim? To what extent are internal perspectives augmented with external perspectives because all legal scholars pivot between multiple perspectives, even scholars who describe themselves as straight down the line doctrinal scholars, inevitably will draw on insights from outside the system, as well as from thinking within the system. So we ask students in the course to distinguish these types of claims. And then I think we ask the most important and interesting question, which is, in relation to those claims, which are internal claims, directed to insiders in the game of rule production, what makes them good or bad claims? What other criteria for the success of those claims? Plainly, the criteria for success can't just be, well, a Supreme Court says it's good or not. That would not be plausible way of answering the question or a satisfactory way of answering the question. So in the end, what we end up talking about is how it is that you use the sources and what it means to exhibit fidelity to the sources. What it means to take law seriously, essentially, to take the concepts and categories that the law itself uses to express itself and to organize itself, what it means to take that seriously. And how far can a scholar play fast and loose with that while still making a claim capable of being accepted? Let's say, by a judge in a common law system. That's essentially what we do in the course. And it's a great course to do if you want some reassurance because we take these seminal texts, which everybody says are the texts that define the field. And if I'm being candid, I think we find a lot to debate in terms of methodology. And we find some, I think it's fair to say, dubious methodological choices in these texts, really quite dubious choices. a'n ymwch i'n fwy. So we find these in the texts that are the landmark texts in the field, and then we think about how we might apply these insights to our own work. That's so interesting. So you're thinking through internally for us as lawyers what constitutes an authoritative and well-reasoned and thought out judgment. So I'm a sociologist and I would call what you're describing discourse analysis or content analysis. And Tyranny, who's our producer for this series, is an expert herself on discourse analysis and been doing lots of work on that. And so I suppose some of the things that we might also look at the use of rhetoric or the absence, the things that the judges, that a particular judge chooses not to say or the sources that they choose not to draw on or the way in which they reveal the fact pattern. Does that also form part of what you talk to law students about? In this course, we do talk a little bit about this, but in the end I say that those questions are questions that this type of skill set that I'm talking about doesn't really allow us to answer those questions. We kind of conclude in the series that using the skills that I've talked about can enable you to make good claims that influence the development of a system and that might make that system more coherent on its own terms. And this might be socially valuable. But that using this methodology can't tell us how it is that we ended up with a system that allocates power in this way, can't tell us about why it is or how it is that we ended up with a composition of the bench that ends up being more conservative at a ten-year period than it was in a prior period. Some of the answer to that may relate to things we can find in the reasoning of cases, but my intuition would be there's lots of stuff that is not caught by that and for which we would need other methods. And so in the end I say, you know, we need social legal scholars, what we basically say in the series, to complement this internal analysis. And it really depends in the end. So which skill set you should use really depends on to whom you want to make your scholarly claim and for what purpose. You know, if you're making a claim which is primarily directed to a judge, which is intended to influence the law, so a kind of best fit of count of how the sources might be organized in a way that gives the best effect to the laws, the principles, the law itself expresses and the other values that the law itself expresses. Then I think, you know, you can do that straightforwardly, successfully using the skills that I've described. But if in the end you're really interested in understanding how it is that we ended up with a system that functions as it does, with the particular rule writers that we have, with their particular preferences, I won't be able to answer those questions with my skill set. Yeah, I'm not sure if that's a full answer to your question. I think it's a really fascinating answer. I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking that I probably learned most about the methodology of doctrinal work when I was involved in the feminist judgements project, when we actually had to write a judgment, I don't know whether that's something that you have ever asked your students to do, but you start by thinking, I don't know how to do this. And then of course you realize you've read absolutely thousands of cases. I remember getting to a sticky bit when we writing my judgment, which was the commercial law judgment, because I couldn't actually find the legal authority to support the term that I wanted to make. And then I thought, oh, I know what the judges do here. They say 30 years at the commercial bar has taught me. And then you suddenly make that term, because that's an authority play with itself. So I don't know whether you've ever got your students to write a judgment, but I think it can be quite revealing of what it is that we're sometimes trying to get out. So I've never asked them to do it. And I think it's an absolutely fantastic idea. I agree with you that particularly postgraduate students would be actually very well positioned to do this. And it would be one way to get at the point that you're making about what is in and what is out. And then the set of things that we're allowed to use, that are valid moves as an internal, as a participant in the system, as an insider, and what's outside the set. And you're right that I suppose, I think it's implicit in what you say that sometimes this might appear to be to risk being artificial, because you could explain a methodological move in more than one way, but apparently there's only one type of move that you can make within the system. But you could actually just put this in other terms, and then it would apparently fail, but it would be in substance the same. I think you're right about that. But internal perspectives in common law systems have to take reasons seriously. They have to, because that's the precondition to internal coherence. So whilst we might say, well, these reasons don't tell us everything. They don't tell us why it is that a judge, that particular judge, is more likely to find one type of prescription appealing than another type, because to know that we need other evidence, which the system itself doesn't supply. The reasons and the rules that govern the way in which they're used are, I think, the best thing that we have in a common law system, at least in relation to judge made rules, to combine or to ensure some degree of stability in internal coherence in the system. And they're an essential discipline, I think, on judicial decision making. They require the judge to explain the decision in a way in which the system treats as valid. And that is a very important discipline. That doesn't mean, though, that you're wrong to say that sometimes a judge might be able to present something using particular reasons, which do not, in fact, really explain why it is, I think that's what's implicit in what you say, why it is that the judge reach that decision. And no amount of hardworking, robust doctrinal research can provide an answer to that. We can't look behind the reasons, in my view. But we could usefully supplement this internal perspective with external evidence about the composition of courts over time, the effect of, let's say, diversity on the bench, the effect of mandatory retirement rules, and all the other very important bits of empirical work that we can do that enable us to observe trends over time in courts in particular jurisdictions and then to draw some inferences from that about what changes you might want to make in a court if you wanted to drive a particular legal change. But that's a very different type of analysis, and I do agree with you. So you said at the beginning, this is very similar to, you know, discourse analysis. And so another text that we do in our course in legal research methods, in Oxford, that all the D. Phil students doing that, and M. Phil students doing their first year, is a piece by Rubin on law and the methodology of law. It's a very thoughtful piece in which Rubin explores the similarities and differences between using legal texts as a legal scholar and using legal texts, for example, as a scholar of literature. So there are some things in common between those two projects, but there are also differences. And the differences relate first to the nature of the text. So the nature of the text in law being a text which has implications for our daily life. It has binding effect, but also the nature of the text as a living thing, the interpretation of which is contested, and so we participate in this contested interpretation. And then the result of that actually affects our daily lives. There are differences, as well as similarities in that any text is susceptible to multiple interpretations and consensus around the right interpretation of text changes over time. So yes, I agree with you. There's much in common between the way in which legal scholars use texts and scholars from other disciplines use texts, but of course legal texts are authoritative. And so when we debate the correct, as it were, interpretation, we debate interpretation on questions that will affect the way in which markets are structured, transactions are entered into as the case may be. So Kristen, you're ahead of me, because I think you've answered the next question I was going to ask you, which was the value of purely doctrinal scholarship. And what I'm hearing from you is that first of all, you don't necessarily think there is something called purely doctrinal scholarship, because in a sense we're always putting things in context, but perhaps I'm summarising badly there. No, I mean, I do think there's purely doctrinal work. I think that my observation in the fields in which I work is that even scholars whose comfort zone is doctrinal work do tend to pivot from an internal perspective to external perspectives when they get to the point in the paper or the book where they want to make prescriptions about what the better or the optimal rule would be, so they tend to then draw on insights particularly from economics, which help us to make some predictions about how it is that a law will be received and what effect a law might actually have in the real world. But I do think there's plenty of work that is pure doctrinal work in the sense that it's work which is written purely from an internal perspective and is directed to an audience of insiders and is developed in a way which complies with the internal rules of the game around how it is that you use the text, the primary sources of law and the permissible uses of those sources, and I think there's huge value in such work. Let me say something about my own work dealing with cases. So I think it's often said that, you know, as scholars, we should aim for something more than mere description, and when people say they're doing doctrinal work, the charge often comes very quickly, does that mean all you're doing is pure or mere description? I tell my own students, I reject this characterisation. I think there is much to be gained from a granular analysis of primary sources of law from an internal perspective, so a process of rigorously trying to understand what it is that has been done, what has actually happened within the system, so that you're able to make a claim about what the rule is in that system and how it is that we got to that point. So I think if you don't do that foundational work and I think scholars have to do that work because it involves what you described earlier, Linda, this very deep immersion in the sources and taking the reason seriously and taking the conventions that govern the sources seriously. I think if we don't do that foundational work, there's a real risk that external perspectives on the system may misfire. So if there isn't foundational work that tells us what it is that has actually happened within the system in a particular area, you may have scholars who bring very valuable external perspectives to bear on that system, but they may risk starting from entirely the wrong starting point. So they may look at a body of rules and say that body of rules looks like this body of rules, and I know about that from the theory that tells me what the job is or the function is of those rules. So now I'm going to evaluate these rules in the light of this theoretical literature which tells me what counts as a good or bad rule of this kind, and I'm going to conclude that this body of rules is rubbish. That analysis is problematic. If insufficient attention has been paid to the internal perspective, what it is that insiders to the system actually understand those rules to be four, and the reasons for the development of the rule in that kind. And if you take that seriously, you may find that those body of rules is actually not intended to function at all in the way that the external theoretical perspective suggests, but instead has been developed to perform a very different function for which we would need a different theoretical apparatus to evaluate whether or not this makes sense or not or is good or bad or could be better or not. You know, we miss a lot when we don't take seriously the foundational work of actually understanding how it is that a system has come to be as it is. And I think there's another problem that comes from using description as a dirty word, and that is that when prescriptions come from outside the system about what a good rule would look like, if those are just put into the system without taking the system's own account seriously and in a common law system without taking the reason seriously, I think there's a real risk that you end up with a project that's actually kind of anti-coherent because it obscures the law's self-understanding. It obscures the reasons that the law itself offers up for why it is that it does what it does. And if those reasons are obscured and then you try to bring in an external perspective where you don't take sufficiently seriously the law's own explanation for what it is that it's done, then you may end up with a development in the doctrine that's actually incoherent because it's failed to pay sufficient attention to the law's own account. And that doesn't mean that I think, you know, and I hope I've been clear in saying that I think internal perspectives are all we need. I mean for the reasons I've given the internal perspective is not going to be able to tell me in the end whether or not it's a good or a bad idea in any thick sense that courts have developed the doctrine in the way they have for the reasons they have. But if I don't at least try to understand that, then I think there's a real risk that merely bringing external perspectives to bear on those rules as an object of study will actually rather than lend coherence to the system actually disrupt the internal coherence of the system. Now of course this depends on which system we're talking about and how open that system happens to be to external perspective. So what I think I'm really talking about here comes from my perspective as someone who works among other things in the English law system. And so I think at least in the English common law system reasons have to be taken seriously wherever a prescription is made about how it is that a doctrine ought to be developed. And we ignore those reasons that are peril. You know it may be right that judges don't offer a full account of why it is that they really love giving effect to party autonomy and contract and they don't tell you about what their parents said over the dinner table when they were five years old. But if we don't at least take what they say is the reason that they do something. Seriously, if we don't take that internal discipline of the reasons for decision seriously, then I think there's a real risk with external perspectives. And so I think it follows from this that in my view the internal perspective is an essential complement to external perspectives and especially is an essential complement in my view to external perspectives that draw on insights from economics to analyze rules and legal systems. I think that economists and legal scholars need to do more talking to each other and that the internal perspective needs to be recognised as one that at that foundational level can help a project to begin on the right basis. And without that you may end up with projects that just don't talk to each other or projects that talk in the wrong direction or worst case scenario projects that actually introduce incoherence rather than coherence into the system. I think you've raised so many important issues actually that are really, really relevant so certainly legal studies I would never describe don't try to scholarship as a mere discipline anyone. There's so much more sophisticated than that but I think you also raised some interesting issues about how sociologists look at law and there's a very well-known debate between Roger Kotroll and David Nelkin which I'm sure you're aware of in which one of the issues that comes up is why don't sociologists take the internal logic of law more seriously and it's shameful how few sociology departments are actually teaching courses on law as a major you know sort of a source of institutions of government so I think it's laying down the gauntlet there really. I mean well it's difficult though isn't it because we are pretty limited as human beings in what we can do in the expertise that we can acquire and you know I think it's right that we don't observe people who purport to be similarly expert in the internal perspective and in external perspectives you know there may be such a person in the world I haven't met them yet I think we tend to develop expertise which enables us to primarily speak from an internal perspective or primarily to speak from a range of external perspectives and I think that's right because to do work well we need to be really grounded in the tools of our discipline and to have real expertise in the deployment of those tools and I think most of us are so limited we won't be able to plausibly do that with more than one toolkit but what I do think ought to happen more at least in the fields in which I operate is that the limitations of external perspectives should be better acknowledged. There are many wonderful things that can be learned about law and legal systems from external perspectives but just as the internal perspective has inherent limitations so too do external perspectives and so sometimes when I read papers that analyze the areas of law that I work in from an external perspective using insights from economics I long for clarity in reading those papers on to whom is this claim directed is this claim directed only to an audience of economists that falls to be directed that falls to be evaluated by reference to the criteria for good or bad claims in economics that's fine that sounds like a very sensible type of claim to develop or is this a claim that's primarily directed to insiders within the legal system but which doesn't take seriously the perspective of those insiders in the system and it's that kind of work which although it has to be done of course those outside the system ought to turn their gaze to the system of rules which determines much of how it is that we live our lives but in so doing there will be limits if the internal perspective is not taken seriously and I think there's a bunch of practical ways that those who study legal systems from an external perspective can seek to draw on the internal perspective without themselves becoming doctrinal scholars who read a thousand cases as an undergraduate it's not something you should do unless you really want to do it but you know you can talk to your colleagues who work from a doctrinal perspective in those areas of law you can sense check your intuitions about what it is that those rules are doing and what function it is that you are inclined to ascribe to those rules you can sense check your understanding of the positive law which sometimes those who work on law from an external perspective simply get wrong and then I think most importantly you can be clear when making prescriptions about who you are directing your prescription to and the criteria for the success of that claim and if you're directing your prescription to an English judge and advocating for a new development in the doctrine of frustration but you don't wish at all to understand how it is that the doctrine has come to be in the form it has and the reasons for that then I think there's a risk that the project will misfire and it will be anti coherent for the reasons I've given anti coherence probably not a phrase is it incoherent that's not the phrase anti coherent sounds a lot more dangerous than incoherent does it and Chris I'm going to move on there to a question that we ask everybody because our podcast series is really directed at early career academics or people that are just beginning to think about methodology I wonder what advice you'd give to a younger self about doing doctrinal research all right so this is a tricky one I think you know I spent a lot of my adult life wishing that I had an economics degree so I think I would say to my younger self yes there are significant limitations with your skill set but there is value in that skill set nonetheless and that you will be able to draw on insights from other disciplines but it's okay that you won't be an economist there is work that can be done that is a value even merely descriptive work that may help to illuminate how it is that a system came to be as it is and why and that may actually help us to make prescriptions about the future development of the Lord that are more likely to succeed because if you miss that foundational work then actually there's every chance that someone who comes in and says this is the rule that you should write will end up failing in that project because there's insufficient sensitivity to the internal perspective so I mean this just sounds like a justification for my existence but I'm you know I would say there is value in this skill set I mean I think also at the end of the day you have to do what you enjoy that it can though it may sound I really enjoy reading cases I really do you know I enjoy reading them and synthesising them and organising them and thinking about how they best fit together and understanding why it is that the distinction was drawn or not drawn and most interesting to me is understanding when will judges develop when will they innovate when will they push and when will they decline to do so and cite questions of stability relationship with Parliament. If that is what you're interested in, then it makes sense to work with the primary sources of law because I won't find satisfactory answers to those questions just using external perspectives in my view. So I think I would say keep doing the things you enjoy. And now to D. Phil students I say the most important thing is, is this the project you're actually interested in doing? Is this what you want to do? There is no point whatsoever doing a D. Phil that you're not enthusiastic about. But if this is what you're interested in, you will find ways to make your definition to understanding, not withstanding the severe, in my case, limitations of my expertise. And question you very kindly recommended three texts you've already spoken about the Ruben. Could you take us through the other two pieces? Yeah, for sure. So I also, these are three pieces that are on the reading list for the doctrinal methods seminar we do for all for first year D. Phil and M. Phil students in Oxford. So the other two pieces are Steven Smith's taking law seriously with you article. Super interesting review of all private law texts in which Smith reflects on what it means to do doctrinal scholarship, the kinds of claims that you might make and what makes those claims good or bad claims. And on what it means to exhibit fidelity to the sources and how much room do we have to move away from what the sources tell us and to make prescriptions that are abstracted away from the details of the sources. And at what point does doctrinal work no longer count as doctrinal work and somehow become the theoretical work that falls to be evaluated using different metrics or criteria for success. So although this is a piece that's actually a review of four books, it's a super interesting reflection on method. And then the other piece, which is also on that reading list is Cass Sundstein's piece on analogical reasoning, which is, you know, a superb account of what we actually do when we reasoned by analogy in a common law system. And on how I think if I'm not doing this piece of disservice in summarising it in this way, but I would summarise it by saying in a world of uncertainty in which there will be many cases in which it's not possible in theory to say what the optimal rule would be. I would note parenthetically that in a lot of my recent work on bankruptcy, Laura, I've essentially concluded that there isn't likely in theory to be an optimal rule. There's likely to be a set and there's a trade-offs for each. So Sundstein says basically in a world of uncertainty where we're actually, it's actually very difficult, even in theory to say what a good rule would be, much can be learned by reasoning from analogy. So you're revealing through the cases over time, the potential work that the rule can do and what might be useful limitations on that rule. It's a beautifully written like all of Sundstein's work is beautifully written. That's enormously helpful. I'm going to go away and have a look at, well, at least one of those pieces now. So thank you so much, Kristen. It's been really valuable exchange. And I think social legal schoolers ought to be talking were often to try to schoolers about these issues. So there was really valuable. Thank you. Final scholars, you know my view, Linda, should spend a lot more time with social legal scholars. You know, and I think just to add, I think it's a travesty, if I may say that students leave universities with law degrees without having an opportunity to seriously engage with the contribution made by social legal scholarship. I mean, how can we do all this work to learn the skills to be able to use the sources in the way that we use them in this, in this quite technical way so we can make a good claim in front of a judge? How can we have done all of that without ever actually having been able to have the opportunity to learn more about why it is that these are the rules we are wired by and whether or not we might imagine a better system. You know, and I think no amount of rigorous doctrinal scholarship will answer those questions, but philosophers, anthropologists, historians, social legal scholars, they can help us to answer those questions. And I think in the end we become legal scholars because we're interested in actually in rules that are better rather than worse, and societies that are helped by or facilitated by rules rather than held back by rules. And that's why I say it's an awkward position to be in as a doctrinal scholar because I honestly don't think with my skill set, I can actually make those strong or thick claims about what a better rule would look like. But if we don't begin by understanding how it is we ended up with the system as it is using history and using social legal perspectives, using critical legal studies perspectives, then I think we're going to fail at the first hurdle in terms of trying to envisage what a better system might look like. Well, for a social legal audience, I think that's a perfect place to end. So thank you. Thank you. I really enjoyed talking to you, Linda. And thank you, Erania, for producing this series and for the invitation. Thanks so much for listening to this talking about methods session. If you'd like to see the list of publications that we refer to in the podcast, please go to frontiers.csls.ox.ac.uk. If you have any ideas for a blog or a podcast, please do get in touch with Linda. Okay, he at the Center for Social Legal Studies. Thanks again. Bye.