Legal methodology refers to the study of legal research methods, including legal theory and legal operation, which includes legal interpretation, legal reasoning and legal thinking methods. Method, in ancient Greek, means "to the right path". The nature and method of law (1) The nature of a discipline determines the research method of this discipline, and the object and field of this discipline determine the nature of this discipline. Law mainly studies three basic questions: 1) What should the law be: What should be an answer to the law? Pay attention to the ideal and value of law. 2) Positive law: What does the law actually look like? Pay attention to law and technology. In other words, what does the law mean? For example, unjust enrichment in civil law reveals the constituent elements and technical problems of the system. 3) Social facts: What the law wants to solve is the moral basis and legitimacy of the law. The law of reality makes the meaning of the law clear. If the law is morally justified and its meaning is clear, can it really work? The failure of implementing the bankruptcy law in China is a counterexample. Therefore, jurisprudence should also study the role and function of law. Chart 1: inevitable law-ideal, value-value judgment analysis method-realistic law-law, logic and semantic analysis of technology-social facts-function-social empirical analysis method correspondingly, the law method has three levels: the first level is value judgment. Law has become an art about justice and kindness, but it is not a science. Because science has a fixed formula, art has no fixed method. It is craft, not art, that defines law. The second level is logical and semantic analysis, which means scientific things. Mainly study the language of law, similar to the study of formal discipline. The third level is sociology of law, which is a field of scientific research. Of course, these methods are not completely separated, and there are overlapping methods when aiming at a certain topic. There is a time difference between the formation of law and the formation of jurisprudence. Law comes first, and legal research comes second. Philosophers in ancient Greece first paid attention to law. Because the law deprives one group and protects the interests of another group, this compulsion needs legitimacy. What people care about is what legitimacy the law supports to protect a certain group and harm or contain the behavior and interests of another group. This part is the focus of natural law. Later, the theoretical summary of practical law is the result of analytical school, which marks the final formation of law as an independent discipline. Because it marks a unique method, claiming to get rid of value, just to understand the meaning of law. The school of social law has raised the question: If the law is just and clear, can it really change the society? Their research conclusion is that law can change society, but society can change law more, in other words, society has greater power to change law. Their method is to study society through law and law through society. Law should be studied not only as a moral norm or practical norm, but also as a social fact. Only in this way can the effectiveness of the law be realized. Therefore, legal methods can be summarized into three types: 1) value evaluation method; 2) Logical analysis and semantic analysis methods; 3) Social empirical research methods. (2) The disciplinary nature of law: Is law science or art? There are two issues involved here: 1, is law a science, and in what sense? 2. What is the relationship between reason and emotion? 1. Scientific study of facts, the fact is "what". A considerable field of law is not science, but the art of justice, good and justice. There is no uniform definition of what science is. We are concerned about several analytical methods included in science. The task of philosophy is to study how to use words. So we need to know how to use "science". Here are three scientific views. The first view holds that "science" refers to the empirical study of nature, such as the knowledge, experience and knowledge accumulated in history about natural affairs. In this sense, social science does not exist. This theory was dominant before the 19th century and quite influential in the 20th century. For example, Britain once thought that science has four characteristics: 1) Science is a theory of "describing the object" rather than a theory of "specifying the object". Such as physics and chemistry, only describe observed phenomena. Comparatively speaking, the research of social science norms is mostly prescriptive, and the research object is closely related to the researchers themselves, and the two are integrated. Therefore, it is impossible to completely require social science to be accurate according to natural science. For example, in the presidential election in the United States, it is impossible to calculate the results like physics. Because people as social science animals can take countermeasures by themselves, the research results of social science may induce relevant people to take countermeasures to change their behavior. So social science can never be highly accurate. Comparatively speaking, economics is closer to science and is observed from the perspective of numbers. The second view is that science is an empirical study marked by empirical methods. Its representative figure is Marx. According to this view, science is to sort out the materials of experience in a rational way. This is the mainstream concept of western society in the twentieth century. The so-called empirical method, that is, empirical research, includes observation, experiment, statistical analysis, mathematical model, questionnaire survey and so on. Among them, the most basic methods are observation and experiment. For example, Bacon said that science is based on observation and experiment. Observation refers to the method of collecting empirical materials without changing the research object. Darwin's theory of evolution, for example, is the conclusion drawn by observation. The so-called experiment refers to observing and studying the relationship between two or more variables under artificial control. For example, these two studies are scientific research: 1) For the safety of the community, the choice of these methods is to increase the police force or patrol times, or increase the measurement of street lamps in the community, and the research result is the latter. 2) The probability of witnesses testifying in Stealing Beer is studied, and it is found that there is a proportional relationship between the number of people present and the possibility of testifying. In this sense, ethics, mathematics, logic and so on are not science. Because logic and mathematics are not empirical studies, there is no need to carry out experiments. What they study is not facts or experiences, but the logical relationship between pure forms and symbols. Of course, distinguishing a subject from science does not mean that it is not important. In this sense, there are social sciences, but there are no humanities. Humanism comes from "human nature" and is a knowledge system opposite to theology, which came into being during the Renaissance. Social science began in the19th century and was founded by Comte, who discussed static social statics and dynamic social dynamics.