Abductive Reasoning as a Logic Tool for Production of New Knowledge in Comparative Legal Science: Abductive Reasoning as a Logic Tool for Production of New...: D. Gianti.

This essay provides an overview of the working mechanisms of abductive reasoning and discusses the possible applications of this logic tool in comparative law research. Indeed, abductive reasoning pertains to the role of explanatory reasoning in formulating hypotheses and, as commonly utilised in contemporary literature of social sciences, in verifying those ideas. Comparative thinking is a logic process of the human mind that employs a particular set of logic and epistemic tools to manage and process data. Arguing that comparative law has not conceptualised a precise and consistent method but only a set of practical guidelines to guide the research process of scholars, this study claims that observation of socio-legal phenomena and theory formation are not only inherently linked in comparative law research but also already theory-driven through an abductive logic process. In this sense, the scholar of comparative law does not rely exclusively on the logic instruments of the traditional legal practitioner but can deepen the potentialities of an abductive logic of discovery and justification already scrutinised by the other human and social sciences. While it is not desirable for the science of comparative law to adopt a single rigid method for research but to maintain a methodological flexibility open to interdisciplinarity, it must question the logic of discovery and justification of its results in a manner similar to that of the other social sciences of which it is a full member. Accordingly, it is assumed that the logic set of tools of comparative law can be enriched by developing the potentialities of the structure of abductive reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]