Researching Legal Oppression: Methodological Notes on Socio-Legal Research on the Relationship between Subordinated Social Groups and Law

Abstract

This methodological paper reflects on the problems of research about the relationship between oppressed social groups and the legal system. The starting point is to notice that oppression is not addressed but is rather reinforced by the legal system. Besides, the stronger the oppression that is mediated by social structures or based on the direct exercise of power, the more important it is to use low intervention, particularly qualitative methods. In the first part of the paper, we focus on two main areas: (1) general literature on socio-legal methodology and (2) reflections on specific sociological methods of law and their potential applications. We conclude that the problem raised by this paper appears only sporadically, mostly in connection with specific research projects. So, there are no elaborated answers or even in-depth discussions in the literature of the sociology of law about this methodological problem. Therefore, in the second part of the paper we attempt to provide a starting point for such a debate. We briefly present the methods that, with appropriate reflexivity, we consider suitable for researching the relationship between oppressed groups and the legal system. We discuss narrative interviewing, legal storytelling, legal ethnography, and critical discourse analysis, briefly describing these methods and providing concrete examples of research that demonstrate their suitability for this purpose.