Methodological foundations for the study of judicial discretion in legal theory
The author of the article clearly demonstrates, using specific examples, the value and practical necessity for every scholar of a cognitive mechanism such as the methodology of law. Attention is devoted to the process of researching a wide range of specific classifications of scientific research methods, drawing on the extensive methodological pluralism offered by the theory of law. The article analyses current trends in legal methodology from the perspective of ‘hierarchy’ and the ‘nesting doll’ principle of systematisation, as well as the specific choice of methods or a single, system-forming method for studying a clearly defined object of scientific knowledge. Furthermore, these are not merely methodological classifications presented in a haphazard order without any clear meaning or functional significance; rather, and this is one of the key aspects, they are accompanied by a direct, authorial description outlining why they are important for the researcher’s scholarly attention in the field of law. This article substantively formulates a number of law enforcement objectives for the methodology of the institution of judicial discretion, which, if successfully implemented, are intended to facilitate a comprehensive study of this subject of scholarly research. The main objective of the article is to consolidate, within a single framework, precisely those research methods that most closely correspond to the intrinsic nature of legal discretion, as one of the contemporary, significant, and progressive mechanisms for regulating public relations in the field of human rights protection and safeguarding. It is necessary to specifically highlight that the formulated scientific objective of this study prompted the development of ideas, relevant considerations, and approaches regarding the need to seek optimal paths, ideological frameworks, and meaningful causal links in terms of adaptation, integrative borrowings, as well as the adaptive interaction of various forms, levels, types, and classifications of methods derived from general legal methodology within the field of law, with a focus on the institution of judicial discretion and its fundamental, integral components. The author of the article, based on the results of the conducted methodological research with a vector on the discretionary object of scientific research, proposed his own typology of scientific methods in accordance with the generalized criterion of the methodological orientation of the knowledge of the institute of legal discretion in the theory of law.