Ricerc@Sapienza

This article deals with the main issues that are characterizing the methodology debate in the legal domain and, in particular, in administrative law field. After a reconstruction of the leading aims and characteristics that have distinguished the legal method and the sci- entific debate thereon (having regard to the relationship with the practice of law and legal education), the analysis moves on to examine the historical roots and developments that characterized, in the twentieth century, the methodology issue in the Italian administrative law scholarship. The analysis shows that, beyond some counter-trends established since the 1960s, the main discontinuities in the traditional legal method were prompted by the process of European integration (especially for a greater openness to other social science and categories). In the last part, the article aims to highlight the possibility and the necessity of reconciling a problematic approach with a systematic one, without neglecting the deep complexity that characterizes the administrative law domain in today’s pluralistic societies.