Reckonability & Legal Research

A Jurisprudential Approach to Teaching Legal Research
by Charles J. Ten Brink
Professor of Law and Director of Library & Technology Services
Michigan State University College of Law
39 New Eng. L. Rev. 307 (2005)

In this essay Professor Ten Brink urges advanced legal research (ALR) instructors to include jurisprudence when teaching:

Effective teaching of ALR requires an integration of basic jurisprudence with the practical “how to” list of research nuts and bolts. The theoretical structures underlying legal research are as much a branch of jurisprudence as they are of information science. Only by understanding the philosophy underlying a research tool — not just how it works, but why it works — can students exploit its strengths and work around its weaknesses. Critical examination of the power and limitations of the variety of research tools available equips students not only to deploy a greater variety of sources to the research tasks at hand, but also to become critical judges of new sources as they are encountered for the first time. [308]

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Absent exposure to the “why” behind the “how,” students will continue to approach legal research as automata, trained to press particular buttons in a particular order without any understanding of the reasons why this often produces suboptimal research. [309]

Following Karl Llewellyn, Professor Ten Brink concludes his thought provoking article with "It is on [the] core of shared understanding — the concept of reckonability — that the process of legal research depends." [316]

Interested? If ever there was a worthwhile article on legal research in theory and practice, this is it.