Undertaking the Conduct of Research - Essay Example

?Research Report: How I Undertook the Conduct of Research This report seeks to describe the research process I undertook in writing my reform paper. Research to me is both a destination and a journey – a destination because it is the culmination of study of methods and processes, distilling in a final output everything I have learned throughout the course; and a journey because the inquiry into knowledge has many pathways, and indeed one pathway leads to another. I discover not only the topic at hand, but also myself, my skills and capacities. The research process has proven to be extremely invaluable to me in developing a methodical and scientific approach, and knowing what to find and where to find it. This report seeks to answer the following questions: a. Where did you start with your research? b. How and why did you approach the various aspects of your work? c. How, why and where you found things? d. Why were some things useful, and why were others not? Where did you start your research? The research done in order to write the research paper was conducted with a view to analyse existing legal rules and jurisprudence on the law on assisted dying. I started my research by first reflecting and asking myself what I wanted to find out and how I wanted to proceed. Did I have a specific opinion on whether or not the law should be reformed and then find justification for such an opinion, or did I want my own opinions to be shaped by the data that I would come across in the course of my own research? The first thing I did was to acknowledge that I had a specific and definite opinion on the issue of assisted dying and it was that I believed the law was in great need of reformHowever, I also wanted to ensure that I started as objectively as possible, and thus it was important for me to get an accurate definition of assisted suicide. For this, I wanted not grey literature or advocacy literature, but something scientific and credible. Thus I relied on a book entitled “Medical Law and Ethics”. I found that the definition of euthanasia, or assisted dying is, the act of consciously assisting someone’s death in order to relieve that person of suffering as a result of terminal illness1. I also found that this can be broken down into even more classifications, such as passive and active, as well as voluntary and involuntary. After knowing what the definition of euthanasia, I then focused on finding what the law presently states on the subject matter. For this, it was of course helpful to not only look at the appropriate statutes and criminal code, but also to look at what eminent jurists were saying on the subject matter. It quickly became clear in the course of my research that while neighbouring countries like The Netherlands and Belgium – both in close proximity to the United Kingdom in more ways than geography -- have allowed euthanasia and in fact, many citizens of the UK and around the world have made the tip to these two countries to have assisted suicide performed on them, it is still illegal in our jurisdiction. How and why did you approach the various aspects of your work? Because I did not want to just focus on a general reform call, I wanted to be specific to a particular bill. To this end, I focused on the Assisted Suicide bill by Lord Joffe, which was priorly defeated in the House of Lords. As I stated in my reform paper, the bill, if enacted into law, would allow terminally ill patients to seek drugs from their doctors that would end their lives. The benefits of the act, if passed, will only be for those who have been medically diagnosed to live for six months, who are suffering from unbearable pain, and who are psychologically of sound mind and not depressed. I chose this particular reform bill because it is by and large the most debated upon and controversial bill with respect to euthanasia and the debates on the merits of this bill have not abated even after its defeat. This research primarily relied on doctrinal methods. Paul Chynoweth defines the Doctrinal Legal Research as follows: Doctrinal legal research is concerned with the formulation of ‘legal doctrines’ through the analysis of legal rules. Within the common law jurisdictions, legal rules are to be found within statutes and cases (the sources of law) but it is important to appreciate that they cannot, in themselves, provide a complete statement of the law in any given situation. This can only be ascertained by applying the relevant legal rules to the particular facts of the situation under consideration.2 I used the doctrinal approach primarily because the nature of this research is legal research. Hence, it was consistent with the nature of the research to apply the doctrinal approach. It was not only imperative to look at what the law says, but also to understand why the law says what it says and how it is applied to the novel questions raised before it. It comes from the understanding that the law is not a black and white bulwark but is shaped and framed by the host of human experiences and human behaviour that makes a regulatory framework not only desierable, but also absolutely necessary. To this end, I looked at two important cases under our jurisdiction: I looked at the case of Diane Pretty3, a terminally ill woman from Luton who was in the advanced stages of motor neurone disease and wanted to die with dignity and in a manner of her choosing (not starved to death). Another important case I looked into is the case of Debby Purdy4, where the Law Lords affirmed her right to know whether or not her husband will not be prosecuted for supporting her desire to terminate her life. In order to meet the research objectives, the doctrinal method will be complemented by a qualitative approach.. In such type of research, the emphasis on collection and interpretation of data is more in words rather than quantification. It allows orientating research to the generating of theory rather than theory’s testing, presuming that a social reality is a “constantly shifting emergent property of individuals’ creation”5 Consistent with this, I then looked into the contrasting opinions between those who supported euthanasia and those who were against it. This was important to me because I wanted to get a dispassionate assessment of both sides of the picture without my opinion on the subject matter colouring my research. Hence, I looked into the different statements and positions of various stakeholders – from those taking a scientific approach to those carrying an overt religious agenda, notably the Christian denominations that have consistently been pro-life. I wanted to weigh the various arguments and counter arguments in order to distill the main strands of argumentation coming from both. How, why and where did you find things I then had to choose between which database to use. According to a comparison made by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies6, Lexis Nexis has full text legislation and cases, and contains about 60 series of law reports. As for UK journals, it has Halbury’s Laws of England. It has the full text of around 60 journals, after 1995. Because the law of the European Union is becoming increasingly relevant to British lawyers, access to EU law, cases, international agreements and publications are also available at Lexis Nexis. International law scholars will also find a huge resource of international law materials, including tribunal decisions. It also has US material including a wide collection of US treaties, as well as material from the Commonwealth: Australia, New Zealand and Canada. On the other hand, WestLaw has the full text of legislation and cases including law reports but just 30 series. However, it gives links to journal references to these cases, unlike Lexis Nexis. It has around 50 full-text titles of journals, its legal journals index covers over 800 journals (in contrast to Lexis Nexis’s 60). It also has EU official publications, legislation, case law, international agreements, and the like. Like Lexis Nexis, it has access to international law materials, US treaties, and material for Australia and Canada (not New Zealand). Finally, Lawtel, which is another database that can be a useful resource for students, contains UK law and case reports similar to the above-mentioned databases, and provides summaries of case law, articles, parliamentary bills, statutes and statutory instruments, as well as command papers. Its interesting feature is the Lawtel Human Rights law, which provides Human Rights related judgments dating back to 1960, as well as human rights legal articles and legislation. It is also updated daily so that the law student or legal practitioner will find it to be of maximum convenience. The next step is ensuring proper referencing. OSCOLA stands for Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities and while it originated in Oxford University in the year 2000, it is now being used by law schools in the United Kingdom and even outside of it, as well as in a number of legal journals. It is used in order to properly cite materials, references and cases used in the paper or essay not only to avoid being cited for plagiarism7, but more importantly, to acknowledge the intellectual source as well as to aid the reader who may wish to inquire more deeply into a particular topic. It also helps the author maintain his or her consistency, and thus it makes it easier for the reader to follow to argument being made. The main feature of the OSCOLA system of referencing is that it uses the footnote system, rather than in-text citations8. An example of in-text citation is this: (Harvey, 2009). A footnote provides evidence for one’s claims by citing legal sources (for example, statutes, cases) as well as secondary sources (for example, books, journals, etc.) Footnotes are indicated by putting a superscript number after the relevant punctuation in the text. If a case is being cited, the name of the case must be given, the neutral citation and the volume and first page of the relevant law report. If necessary, the name of the court must be given as well. Why were some things useful and some not Given the plethora of information available online, it became incumbent upon me to distill all available data into the ones that I actually needed. Bearing in mind that what I was doing was a primarily legal paper, I had to do away with arguments that do not involve the legal reform measure, and was overtly and unabashedly coming from a moral or philosophical standpoint. But this was also made complicated by the fact that legal objections to propositions are framed by a religious agenda, therefore the challenge is knowing how to make the right choices. I was therefore constrained to make my own guidepost criteria: (1) would it move my research forward? (2) is it an argument for or against the specific points in the Assisted Suicide Bill of Lord Joffe, (3) does it contribute to the legal discourse? I felt that coming up with this criteria aided me in no small way in making my research as coherent and as cohesive as possible. Word count: 2000 Paul Chynoweth, Legal Research. Available at http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/66542/Legal_Research_Chynoweth_-_Salford_Uni..pdf Accessed on 10 July 2012. Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (2011). ‘A quick reference companion of LexisNexis Butterworths and Westlaw UK’. http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/guides/docs/Comparison%20lexis-westlaw.pdf accessed 18 July 2012 Oxford Law ‘Oscola: Fourth Edition”. http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/OSCOLA_4th_edn.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2012. Pattinson, S. (2011). Medical Law and Ethics. London: Sweet and Maxwell. Pretty v United Kingdom - 2346/02 [2002] ECHR 427 (29 April 2002) Pretty v Director Of Public Prosecutions & Anor [2001] EWHC Admin 788 (18th October, 2001)  Purdy, R (on the application of) v Director of Public Prosecutions & Ors [2009] EWCA Civ 92 (19 February 2009)  Rachels, J, 'Active and passive euthanasia', New England Journal of Medicine, 1975, 292(2). University of York. ‘Reference with Confidence’ (2010). http://www.york.ac.uk/k-roy/pdfs/5062_OSCOLA_booklet_2.pdf accessed 20 15 July 2012. Read More