Inter-Paradigmatic Methodological Triangulation in Legal Research: Epistemological Limits and Deontic Challenges

This article is devoted to a critical analysis of the limits of the feasibility, legitimacy and appropriateness of applying methodological triangulation in legal research, against the backdrop of the contemporary transformation of scientific knowledge, the digitalisation of legal reality and the increasing interdisciplinarity of scientific research. The aim of the study is to determine the critical limits of the feasibility, legitimacy and expediency of applying methodological triangulation in legal research, beyond which the integration of methods degenerates into eclecticism and chaos that are destructive to legal science, as well as to provide a theoretical justification for the algorithm of subordination and hierarchical coordination of these methods to preserve the autonomy of legal dogmatics. The achievement of this objective is ensured through the use of a range of general scientific, philosophical-methodological and specialised legal methods, in particular the formal-legal (dogmatic), systemic-structural and comparative-legal methods, as well as the method of modelling and elements of formal and deontic logic. A distinction is drawn between intramethodological and interparadigmatic triangulation, and their methodological specifics and potential risks are identified. It is argued that empirical data cannot automatically determine the normative content of law, and that their mechanical inclusion in legal research gives rise to methodological eclecticism. A three-stage algorithm for the hierarchical synthesis of methods is proposed: normative detection, descriptive extension and epistemological reconceptualisation. It has been demonstrated that, in studies aimed at analysing the normative content of law and modelling legal regulation, the formal-legal method must serve as the epistemological core and the final normative-legal filter, whilst empirical methods ensure the identification, clarification and contextualisation of the relevant issues. It has been argued that the critical limits to the application of triangulation in law are determined by its immanent prescriptive nature. Empirical facts of ‘what is’ cannot automatically dictate the content of legal norms of ‘what ought to be’ or substitute for criteria of justice and constitutionality. Empirical analysis is capable of revealing anomalies in the application of the law or defects in normative modelling, but it is powerless in the realm of legal goal-setting and axiology. It is concluded that methodologically sound triangulation is possible only on condition of conceptual synthesis and a clear hierarchy of methods.