Demystifying legal reasoning

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Demystifying legal reasoning

Larry Alexander, Emily Sherwin

(Cambridge introductions to philosophy and law)

Cambridge University Press, 2008

  • : hbk.
  • : pbk.

Available at  / 14 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-245) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Demystifying Legal Reasoning defends the proposition that there are no special forms of reasoning peculiar to law. Legal decision makers engage in the same modes of reasoning that all actors use in deciding what to do: open-ended moral reasoning, empirical reasoning, and deduction from authoritative rules. This book addresses common law reasoning when prior judicial decisions determine the law, and interpretation of texts. In both areas, the popular view that legal decision makers practise special forms of reasoning is false.

Table of Contents

  • Part I. Law and its Function: 1. Moral controversy
  • Part II. Common Law Reasoning: Deciding Cases When Prior Judicial Decisions Determine the Law: 2. Ordinary reason applied to law: natural reasoning and deduction from rules
  • 3. The mystification of common-law reasoning
  • 4. Common law practice
  • Part III. Reasoning from Canonical Legal Text: 5. Interpreting statutes and other posited rules
  • 6. Infelicities of the intended meaning of canonical texts and norms constraining interpretation
  • 7. Non-intentionalist interpretation
  • 8. Is constitutional interpretation different? Why it isn't and is
  • 9. All or nothing.

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Details

  • NCID
    BA86320927
  • ISBN
    • 9780521878982
    • 9780521703956
  • LCCN
    2007045107
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Place of Publication
    New York
  • Pages/Volumes
    viii, 253 p.
  • Size
    23 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
  • Parent Bibliography ID
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