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Record W4409821449 · doi:10.1111/area.70019

Research methods for legal geography

2025· article· en· W4409821449 on OpenAlexfundno aff
Francesco Chiodelli

Bibliographic record

VenueArea · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicLaw in Society and Culture
Canadian institutionsnot available
FundersSimon Fraser University
KeywordsGeographyHuman geographyRegional scienceEconomic geography

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract This paper provides an overview of the research techniques that can be used for explorations in legal geography, highlighting the multiple instruments available in the legal geographer's methodological toolkit. These diverse methods stem from a twofold shift away from the ‘ordinary’ research techniques of human geography. This shift has entailed first, the adaptation of traditional qualitative methods, such as ethnography or interviews, to research on subjects like judges, politicians, and other elite members; and second, the appropriation of methods prevailing in the field of law, such as doctrinal analysis. Against this background, the paper shows which research methods can be used to investigate the different subdomains of the law‐space tangle (i.e., law‐in‐books, law‐as‐a‐system‐of‐practices, and experiencing‐the‐law). Among these methods, special attention is paid to doctrinal analysis, which is usually distant from the typical training of geographers: its characteristics and the caution required in its use are emphasised, as are the tools that can make it more systematic and the specific contribution that a geographical approach can make to it. The paper also discusses the possibility of using quantitative techniques, which are currently approached with a certain scepticism, to carry out legal geographical analyses.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.097
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.121
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.097
Threshold uncertainty score0.512

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0970.121
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.002
Bibliometrics0.0130.013
Science and technology studies0.0030.019
Scholarly communication0.0120.012
Open science0.0040.007
Research integrity0.0030.007
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0230.005

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.101
GPT teacher head0.529
Teacher spread0.428 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations3
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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