Legal Scholarship and Practice through the lens of Interdisciplinary Methodology

The paper argues that, alongside — and independently of — the well-established trend toward the differentiation of scientific knowledge, another mode of universalizing the production of new scientific knowledge has emerged, namely: interdisciplinarity. As a foundational principle of contemporary science, interdisciplinarity entails the reception, within one or more disciplines, of the language, methods, concepts, techniques, technologies, and practices specific to another discipline. This makes it possible to understand and assess the complex interconnections among different fields of knowledge and, under the influence of technological and other contemporary factors of civilizational development, to develop a more reliable scholarly account of the current state and future development of legal reality. The study proceeds from the premise that the adoption of an interdisciplinary methodology within a developing legal system is determined by objective processes occurring in law. These include processes of convergence and divergence that have supplanted the differentiation processes which generated the proliferation of ever-new branches of law. Such processes fundamentally transform the legal landscape and, correspondingly, redirect the focus of legal scholarship. The author concludes that the use of interdisciplinary methodology neither diminishes nor displaces the requirements of precision and definiteness applicable to the results and nature of scholarly inquiry. Nor does it blur the understanding of its scholarly value, its practical effectiveness, or the actual significance of the conclusions, generalizations, and recommendations advanced.