Way of working on a doctoral dissertation in legal sciences: methodological remarks 1600-SZD-WM-PDNP

The lectures are devoted to various methodological issues related to the preparation of the doctoral dissertation and legal regulations related to doctoral studies from the perspective of various sciences of law: civil law, European and international law, administrative law and criminal law. The lectures will also present problems such as: requirements that are set for doctoral students and their doctoral dissertations, as well as the procedure of the doctoral dissertation in legal sciences.
In the field of private law: The purpose of the class is to present issues concerning doctorate degree and conducting research towards obtaining this degree, particularly from the perspective of research concerning private law.
The following issues will be dealt with:
* legal regulation on procedure of granting a doctoral degree
* the importance of this scientific degree from historical and comparative perspective
* research activity during doctoral studies: publications, research internships abroad, grants and scholarships,
* issues concerning working on doctoral dissertation: different stages in the procedure of writing the dissertation (selection of a topic, access to sources and their critique, legal databases and other IT instruments helpful for researchers, formulation of a thesis, the structure of the dissertation, legal methods, plagiarism, ghostwriting, most common criteria for evaluation doctorate dissertations)
* formal aspects of doctoral dissertation (particularly formatting footnotes and bibliography).
In the field of European and international law: the substantive issues related to work on the doctorate will be presented dynamically - from the selection of the subject of the dissertation and research methods, through the methods of obtaining material for the work, its selection and development, to the preparation of the thesis. In particular, attention will be paid to electronic databases, unacceptable plagiarism and ghostwriting, formal issues including citing various sources in footnotes and bibliography. The axis of lectures will be the evolution of the approach to the subject and methods of learning law in Europe (against the background of the USA). The questions asked are: has the science of law "Americanized" or theoretical, contextual and interdisciplinary analysis dominating, what trends prevail in Poland - that is what do we (lawyers) do and why? A repertoire of methodological approaches available to the lawyer-scientist: examples of research projects and the dogmatic, as well as theoretical and empirical methods used in them. Case-study: a brief analysis of the methods published in the example published PhD theses in the field of European and international law.
In the field of administrative law: the most important issue will be to indicate the specificity of the legal approach to research on public administration, as well as the techniques of combining the legal approach with other methodological perspectives in public administration research. The following issues will be of particular relevance:
• Research methods of administrative sciences - from the classic public administration theory, through the administrative policy and administrative law, to public management;
• Dominant methodological approaches in contemporary administrative research - quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods
• Interdisciplinary approach and multidisciplinary approach in administrative research
• Legal approach in administrative research - from Juristenmonopol to marginalization
• Specificity of the legal approach - leading research methods of jurisprudence used in administrative research (historical method, comparative law, dogmatic method)
• Combining administrative law research methods with other methodological approaches, especially literature reviews (including systematic review), case studies, secondary data analysis, in-depth interviews, questionnaire surveys, and prognostic studies (eg using the Delphi method).
In addition to this, during the class the examples of scientific articles combining a legal approach with other methods of administrative research will be discussed.
In the field of criminal law: this part of the course is devoted to briefly presented methodological issues of criminal law in a broad sense, taking into account achievements of legal dogmatics (both in pragmatic and non-pragmatic aspects), comparative and historical method (including Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Roman and other criminal law systems), as well as conducting empirical research or exploitation of its results for the purposes of preparing a doctoral dissertation and subsequent scientific research. During the course, there will be presented issues of combining problems and methods of the so called criminal sciences (in particular: substantive and procedural criminal law, forensics, criminology, social psychology, medicine and other forensic sciences), as well as the possibility of using the broadly understood criminal law component as a necessary element in creating research consortia and implementation of interdisciplinary research projects of both theoretical and practical nature. The important part of the course will be issues of criminal and disciplinary liability for plagiarism in scientific activities and the rules of disciplinary proceedings as a consequence of arising suspicion of such an act - with reference to particular cases from practice.