EU legal scholarship has a strong tradition of contextual, somewhat theoretical analysis. That tradition has been facilitated by the open nature of EU law, the grand social goals of the EU, and the need to construct legitimating legal stories around these, but also by the interconnected community of EU law scholars and professionals, which have given the field a kind of autonomy from more doctrinal national law. Yet lacking empirical evidence beyond legal texts, EU law’s free-ranging scholarship is suffering a crisis of disillusionment, paralleled by the crisis of the EU itself, which invites scholars to reconsider the nature of their role. In this context, empirical legal studies is enjoying a huge rise in popularity among EU legal scholars, with its promise of answers to important questions, rather than mere commentary. That leads to synergies as well as conflicts – for resources, and about methods – but above all it seems likely to reorientate EU legal scholarship away from its path of the last five decades and towards a new stylistic and methodological mix.

It has long been known that undergraduate research can also be beneficial in legal studies, not least for underrepresented students (cf. Hathaway et al., 2002). However, legal education has a special and – in contrast to most other disciplines – a country-specific relationship to research-based learning at undergraduate as well as at postgraduate level. The modalities and space for designing research-based learning courses depend largely on the respective subjects and methods of research. In jurisprudence, however, these vary considerably depending on the characteristics of the respective jurisdiction and its legal system.