Historians often caution against making broad, sweeping statements about disparate times and places, and de-emphasise individuals and events in favour of broader social forces in driving historical change. But I often see legal or political scholars breaking these rules, and using individual events to illustrate their own pet theories, or assigning huge swathes of our modern systems to things such as the Magna Carta or the Treaty of Westphalia. How often do historians interact with the other spires in the ivory castle? Is this even a problem, or can it be accepted as just a difference in methodology?
The answer, it seems, is ‘it depends’. Generally, people in other disciplines who focus on the historical part of their discipline, for example legal historians, have (as far as I know) been trained in historical methodologies as well. Marie Seong-Hak Kim (Law and Custom in Korea: Comparative Legal History) is IMHO a good example of this.
However, scholars without training in historical methodologies etc. are a different case. For example, this sub’s favored archenemy, Diamond, is not regarded highly. It can be worse though, a law and economics paper by Ramseyer (Contracting for sex in the Pacific War, 2021) passed peer review while he (most likely) purposefully neglected or misread certain sources. Personally, I suspect that it is easier for these researchers to make these sweeping claims because the peer review public that approves/disproves their work lacks the same methodological background to engage with the historical part of their argument.
*sorry for the short comment, I was writing on my phone. Hope other people can add to this.