ELSA-VU Lunch meeting- Mapping the mind of the other: Q-method as a tool to assess subjective perceptions of law

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In the second half of 2024, Danielle Chevalier and I started a research project using Q-method as a tool to investigate the opinions of civil servants in the municipality of Amsterdam on the recently enacted ‘Omgevingswet’, or ‘Environment and Planning Act’. This investigation arose primarily from our own curiosity about the Act, a curiosity we shared with a number of other planners and lawyers from both the UvA, Leiden, and Tilburg University. The Act promised a complete overhaul of the Dutch planning system, and we were interested in what the people who would actually have to implement the Act in practice would think of it. Would they embrace the new way of working enthusiastically, or would they long for the old ways?

This substantive question triggered us, but just as important was that this investigation also provided a chance to try a research methodology relatively little used in the field and experiment with it in legal consciousness research. Q-methodology is a method born in psychology in the 1930s and used to assess subjectively held viewpoints on certain issues. The method claims to offer a systematic, mixed-methods overview of subjectively held viewpoints, a strong enough claim to make us want to test it in practice. Could Q-method be a useful method to investigate what has proven a perennial question in socio-legal research: how do people relate to the law?

In this presentation, I give an account of Q-methodology as a method for socio-legal studies and go into the questions of what this method entails, where it may be usefully employed, and what pitfalls there are to using it, especially for us as mostly qualitatively trained lawyers. When applied carefully, however, the method can yield rich data, potentially offering more nuanced accounts of how people relate to law than the well-known trichotomy of before the law, with the law, and against the law.

LEVEL: Basic/medium

METHOD: Qualitative

ABOUT THE LECTURER: This session will be given by dr. Tobias Arnoldussen: “As a socio-legal scholar I examine the interplay between law and society. Especially the role of the environmental question in the development of law, has my abiding interest from an empirical as well as a theoretical standpoint . In addition to environmental law, I am interested in legal theory concerning spatial planning and criminal law. I teach a number of courses at Tilburg University, among them the introductory course to law and legal theory, the science of law, moot court and I supervise theses. According to the student evaluations my approach to teaching is “understandable, humorous and patient”. Together with Public Administration scholars Eva Wolf and Merlijn Van Hulst, I study the transformative potential of conflict over sustainable development projects in the urban environment in the context of the CONTRA-project, funded by Urban Europe. After work I can be found behind a chess board, willing to play with anyone who enjoys the royal game.”

PREREQUISITES: No prior knowledge is required.

REGISTRATION: If you would like to attend this meeting, please send an email to Anniek van der Schuijt, on 30 March at the latest. She will send you the Teams link to join the online meeting. If you are interested but not available, please let Anniek know and a recording of the lecture can be sent to you afterwards.