Responsible Legal Research and Innovation

At a time of a threefold planetary crisis, steering legal research and legal innovation in connection with other sciences seems to be the most effective solution for pushing ahead urgent sustainability transitions. Meta-research studies use interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to promote robust science.
At the EU level, organizational and financial resources have been assembled to back responsible research and innovation. The two latter features form a central concept in scientific research policy in the European Union based on the idea of placing science with - and for - society through individual or collective research with sustainable development goals. The European Commission has developed a set of indicators for the identification, promotion and monitoring of responsible research and innovation. But these indicators are not specific to Law as a discipline.

The leading purpose of this book is to develop the field of legal meta-research, providing guidelines for future legal research and legal innovation corresponding to the European vision of ethics, societal engagement, gender equality, open access and science education.

Alexandra Aragão is Professor at the Faculty of Law of theUniversity of Coimbra, Portugal, a member of the EuropeanNatura 2000 Legal Observatory, the EELF, Avosetta.org and theIPBES. She coordinates the JUST-Side interdisciplinary network.
Émilie Gaillard is lecturer in private law, Director of the Master's Degree GENFUT (Future Generations and Legal Transitions) at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Rennes, France. She is the general coordinator of the Normandy Chair for Peace (2019-2024). She is currently based at the faculty of law of Nouméa (2024-2026).