CHALLENGES OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH WITH COURT PROCEDURES: NOTES FROM THE EXPERIENCE WITH CASES OF TERMINATION OF PARENTAL RIGHTS

Abstract

The goal of this article is to introduce
some of the challenges faced in carrying
out empirical research based on judicial
processes, considering the particularities
of these materials and the importance of a
methodological design that investigates them
based on research analysis and not on legal
practice. For the construction of the central
argument of this article, some basic outlines
are presented about empirical research in
law and its challenges and also about the
ethnography of documents as a methodology
of special interest for researchers in the legal
field. For the presentation of the challenges,
it briefly describes the peculiarities of the
processes of Termination of Parental Rights
and the strategies used for its reading, based
on challenges and complexities encountered in
the field, related to the access to the processes,
to the selective secrecy that permeates them,
the reading strategies and the management
of emotions. Finally, interviews carried out
throughout the research are used to present
the different layers present in these processes
that, from the perspective of this text, need to
be considered in order to carry out empirical
research in law that has the analysis of judicial
processes among its material. The conduction
of the research was approved by the relevant
Ethics Committee, through Plataforma Brasil.