Doctrinal Legal Research Methodology in Corporate Tax Governance Studies: Strengths, Critiques, and Balanced Reflections

Abstract

Doctrinal legal research remains the principal methodology in legal scholarship, particularly for studies exploring corporate tax governance frameworks. This conceptual article rigorously investigates the doctrinal methodology's foundational role in analyzing complex tax regulatory systems and legal compliance mechanisms within corporate contexts. Utilizing a systematic doctrinal framework, the study deploys primary legal sources, including statutes, regulations, and judicial decisions, alongside authoritative secondary materials to examine corporate tax governance structures. This approach demonstrates methodological effectiveness across diverse corporate tax governance domains, revealing strengths in regulatory analysis, compliance framework evaluation, and enforcement mechanism assessment. The methodology provides comprehensive analytical tools for examining various governance instruments, including corporate liability frameworks, stakeholder protection mechanisms, and regulatory accountability structures. The doctrinal research process comprises precise problem identification, extensive legal materials collection, critical evaluation, analytical synthesis, and normative conclusion drawing. While addressing critiques of doctrinalism’s normative orientation and isolation from empirical methods, the study argues for doctrinal research’s essential role in generating rigorous legal analysis and guiding doctrinal innovation. This research thereby reaffirms doctrinal legal methodology’s primacy in legal scholarship and its capacity to yield robust, normative clarity in the study of law.