Journal of the Charles University Law Faculty
David Kosař, Jan Petrov
Author’s affiliation:
Faculty of Law, Masaryk University Brno
How to select and develop case studies in law: Insights from law and politics research
Jurisprudence 6/2016 Section: Articles Page: 21-30
Keywords: case study; case; case selection; methodology; law and politics
Abstract: This paper deals with the fundamental aspects of case study research and its primary aim is to show that the case study method is able to increase the theoretical relevance of legal research. First, we explain what a “case” is and what the possibilities of generalization beyond a single case are. The core of the paper then focuses on the question of case selection in theoretically oriented case studies. The paper argues in favour of the theory-driven techniques of case selection and describes five case selection techniques – a prototypical case, the most difficult case, a deviant case, the most similar cases, and the most different cases. In order to illustrate the use of these techniques in practice, we provide examples from law and politics research for each technique.
