Demystifying Legal Reasoning

Download or read book Demystifying Legal Reasoning written by Larry Alexander and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-16 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.