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Developing a Topic
You would not be enrolled in a research degree unless you already had some idea of the topic you want to research.
However, the topic you submitted with your application for enrolment is very unlikely to be the same as the one you write your thesis on. Topics develop as you get further into them. Apart from anything else, they get bigger!
It is not surprising that if you have read 20 articles about a topic, it will appear much smaller than when you have read 200. That is one way in which topics get bigger: you find out more about them.
This is a universal experience of students who do an undergraduate (honours) research project, or of anyone with a limited project over one or two sessions. If you have had that experience, you will probably recall having to be ruthless in limiting the size and scope of your topic. You will also need to limit your topic for a Research Masters. Even a PhD may seem to offer a lot of scope to explore issues, but while 80-100,000 words may seem a lot when you begin, after researching the one topic for two years, it will be very hard to say everything in that space.
However, since for a Masters or PhD you have rather more time, you do not need to start slashing and discarding interesting aspects of your topic immediately. You should start out (at least for two or three months) by being fairly relaxed about how big the topic might get. Time enough to whittle it down when you have a better idea of what is involved.
If you are working towards a PhD, in particular, you need to familiarise yourself with the broader, theoretical aspects of your topic. What area of law does it fit into? What is the jurisprudence in that area? Catch up with the latest theories. If you are working in an interdisciplinary field you will need to expand your theoretical horizon to include a wider range of writings.
Once you go up to the heights of theory and speculation, you may come down with a new perspective on the nuts and bolts of your topic.
You will need to come down again in time to present a research proposal, so this gives you a limited time in the beginning to explore the extent of your topic. If necessary, build in more time to read and consider theory as part of your substantive research.
Before writing a research proposal, you need to be able to write down your topic. Some of the books suggest you should be able to write it in one sentence. After all, if you can't write it in one sentence, maybe you don't really know what it is. Kate Stevens and Christine Asmar suggest you try drawing your topic. Paul Leedy takes you through a surprisingly difficult (but important) exercise designed to clarify your topic (at pp 51-56 of the reading).
As Stevens and Asmar write, your topic must, above all, be interesting enough to sustain your commitment for the months and years it will take. One aspect of that interest is the purpose for which you want to do it. We consider that in the next resource.
Stevens, K. , and C. Asmar. Doing Postgraduate Research in Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1999. Chapter 2, Starting to Research
Leedy, Paul D. Practical Research. Planning and Design. Seventh ed. NY: Macmillan, 2001.
Chapter 3, The Problem: The Heart of the Research Project