ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 1 – law
PANEL 1 – LAW
CONTENTS
1. Overall Assessment...................................................................................... 54
2. Research Infrastructure................................................................................ 56
3. Research Quality ..........................................................................................61
4. Collaboration.............................................................................................. 68
5. Research Activity and Teaching.................................................................... 72
6. Evaluation of Future Plans............................................................................ 73
7. Future Potentials and Possibilities..................................................................76
8. Gender and Equal Opportunity Issues.......................................................... 79
1. Overall Assessment
According to its Strategic Plan 2007–2011, the Lund Faculty as a research
unit should be Sweden’s best and also counted among the foremost
centres of legal research in Europe. In some areas of law, the Faculty has
already been able to approach the goals of the Strategic Plan. Some of the
research is also internationally recognized.
A clearly positive development in the Faculty has been that more and
more scholarship is published in international languages (mainly
English, but German as well) and on international venues. The present
internationalisation of law requires the internationalisation of legal
scholarship, and the use of other than national languages brings legal
scholarship into the reach of much wider audiences than before. However,
law continues to be also a national phenomenon, and legal scholars
still have specific responsibilities with regard to the national legal culture
and are required to publish in their national languages, too. The Lund
legal scholars have found a functioning balance in their use of different
publishing languages.
The role of legal faculties varies from country to country, and it is difficult
to set up unequivocal international standards for academic legal
scholarship. The Nordic scholarly community is the most natural point
of reference in the assessment of Swedish legal scholarship. The criteria
the Panel has employed in its evaluation derive from their particular
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