Wikibooks:WikiProject OpenRewi - Open Legal Science/Didactics

Our books' intended audience are university students and lecturers. We want to offer an effective way for students to familiarize themselves with the knowledge they will need for exams and essays while encouraging them to reflect critically on the topics covered in the books. Please follow these guidelines both when writing your own texts and reviewing the texts of others.

Language edit

We use inclusive, easily accessible and readable language.

Diversity edit

White male authors are grossly overrepresented in citation practices throughout the legal academy. We encourage you to reflect critically on your own citation practices and to look actively for works you can cite from female and nonbinary authors and from authors located in the Global South.

Structure and Coherence edit

Each chapter starts with listing the knowledge that is required to understand the content of the chapter. Please provide a link to other book chapters that cover these topics. Additionally, please reflect on the learning outcomes you want to achieve with your chapter and also indicate these at the beginning of the chapter.

Each author is responsible for making sure that the content of their chapter is not inconsistent with other chapters in the same book or with other OpenRewi content. If you notice a thematic overlap with another chapter, please contact the respective author to coordinate. If you decide to offer divergent views on or approaches to a topic, please do so in a transparent manner. During the peer-review process, as many different people as possible should review a chapter.

The chapter ends with a summary of the chapter's most important points.

Guiding Questions edit

The guiding question(s) on each chapter should not be "What is the law on x?" but rather "What are typical arguments put forward on x?" "Which arguments have been successful in the past and which ones haven't?" "How are different arguments on x situated?" "How does the set of legal arrangements on x work?" "What kinds of relations does the law on x institute?" "What kinds of effects have the laws on x produced in the past?".[1]

During the peer-review process, please reflect on overarching questions, which should be addressed in an introductory chapter to the respective section or sub-section of the book.

To see the changes others have made to your chapter during peer review, please click on 'View history'.

Theory, Methodology, and History edit

We aim at including theoretical, methodological, and historical questions into each chapter. Therefore, the general theoretical, methodological, and historical introductions at the beginning of the book should only cover questions that would overburden the chapters on specific topics and that are a necessary prerequisite for understanding more specific arguments involving theory, methodology, and history as they relate to the topic of the respective chapters.

Footnotes edit

  1. Sundhya Pahuja, ‘Methodology: Writing about how we do research’ in Rossana Deplano and Nicholas Tsagourias, Research Methods in International Law: A Handbook (Edward Elgar 2021).