Legal science can and should comply with the customary requirements as to
scientificity. The fact that the doctrinal study of law is not a science has increased
the popularity of the interdisciplinary approach and law-and-something disciplines.
They rely on the theory arsenal of non-legal disciplines. One may ask whether there
is an alternative that could make legal science stronger in the competition for
scientific hegemony.
The purpose of this book is to define a new legal discipline as an alternative to
law-and-something disciplines and the traditional interdisciplinary approach. Its
point of view is how users can use legal tools and practices to reach their objectives
in different contexts. We call this new discipline User-Friendly Legal Science.
User-Friendly Legal Science is a qualitative science. It is anchored in theories on
scientificity, scientific theory building and scientific methods customarily used in
social sciences. Its goal is interpretive understanding. It can use abduction and
grounded theory. It can also be regarded as a design science that produces constructions.
These concepts are common knowledge in qualitative research. The use
of such tested standard parts makes it easier to develop User-Friendly Legal Science
and increase its overall usability. However, User-Friendly Legal Science itself is
designed as a legal discipline.
The framework of User-Friendly Legal Science can help to upgrade many
existing legal areas into scientific disciplines in legal research and education.
Since this approach is new, a detailed account of the theory and methods of User-
Friendly Legal Science might seem premature. But perhaps a book at this stage of
the development of the discipline shows that there is an alternative.