On methodological common ground

My good friend Hans Hacker has written an excellent post regarding the methodological divide in public law.  Qualitative and quantitative accounts of courts have a similar objective:

Political scientists really do prefer that their theories reflect (to the extent possible) the reality that confronts them. So, we began to look more closely at what amounts to . . . stories. And, we used the themes emerging from those stories to tell a better story ourselves using statistical methods. Or, as a social scientist might put it, our theories attempt to connect facts, interpret them, and uncover their relationships to reflect what we see happening in the world. This is the same basic goal of story-telling.