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Those advocating mixed methods research have long believed that ethnographic methods can strengthen quantitative data. This paper explores some practical and philosophical issues through considering a study that seeks to explain differences in detention rates between children’s courts in three Australian states (Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales), primarily through observing sentencing hearings. It starts by considering whether the lower rate in Victoria indicates that magistrates are more lenient or, alternatively, that young people commit fewer offences in this state. The paper demonstrates, through comparing cases with similar features, that Victoria is more tolerant. Qualitative research can also suggest ways of developing a quantitative analysis by identifying significant potential differences within states and between decision makers. The paper also considers the strengths and limitations of court culture as an explanatory causal variable, and the alternative approach to comparison suggested by the interpretive tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative research has to market itself aggressively, both because academic publishers face more pressures to sell books, and because of the competitive funding climate where one often has to demonstrate methodological innovation as a condition for obtaining a grant. This article considers how social theorists have understood the issue of 'newness' and the pursuit of innovation as a cultural problem. It explores the issue in qualitative research through examining how we accomplish and recognize 'newness' in the texts we read and produce as academics, which include publisher's catalogues and grant applications, and through considering technological advances such as internet ethnography and video analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores some implications of interpretive philosophies of social science, developed by thinkers such as Max Weber and Peter Winch, for conducting comparative research in criminal justice. These address the meaningful character of human activities but, unlike constructionism and postmodernism, respect the objective and constraining character of institutional realities. Drawing on American empirical studies that employ qualitative methods to explain statistical variation, the article shows how interpretive traditions often find it difficult freeing themselves from positivist assumptions and fall short of investigating how social actors understand and engage in comparison in their everyday lives. A discussion of data collected in an ethnographic study of children's courts in Australia demonstrates how a more thorough-going and consistent approach to comparison is possible within this interpretive framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study, based on observing hearings and interviewing practitioners in the Youth Justice Division of the Magistrates' Court in Hobart, Tasmania. Although there is a large academic literature by jurists on the philosophical principles, and social scientists on the attitudinal and institutional factors shaping court decisions, there have been few studies that examine what actually happens in the courtroom. This paper argues that much can be learnt about the collaborative nature of judicial work, the administrative side of decision-making (neglected by most studies) and the welfare values informing work in this court, through examining sentencing hearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts an ethnomethodological approach towards the study of radicalism in legal professional practice, focusing on the ways in which radicalism was produced, displayed and exhibited in the talk and actions of a small firm of solicitors situated in one of the inner city areas of a large city in northern England. Three aspects of radicalism are examined: radicalism as a public phenomenon; radicalism as a contestable phenomenon; and radicalism as a moral framework. It is suggested that this analytic approach has implications for the way we might study other forms of contemporary radicalism, and for the way in which radicals in the academy theorise and understand the world of the radical lawyer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]