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Demystifying Legal Reasoning

Demystifying Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Larry Alexander
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113947247X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book 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.

Demystifying Legal Reasoning

Demystifying Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Larry Alexander
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113947247X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Book 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.

Demystifying Legal Reasoning

Demystifying Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Larry Alexander
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511407512
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book 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.

Demystifying Legal Reasoning

Demystifying Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Larry Alexander
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781107183681
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 253

Book 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.

Demystifying Legal Reasoning

Demystifying Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Larry Alexander
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Book Description


Minding the Law

Minding the Law PDF Author: Anthony G. AMSTERDAM
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674020200
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 467

Book Description
In this remarkable collaboration, one of the nation's leading civil rights lawyers joins forces with one of the world's foremost cultural psychologists to put American constitutional law into an American cultural context. By close readings of key Supreme Court opinions, they show how storytelling tactics and deeply rooted mythic structures shape the Court's decisions about race, family law, and the death penalty. Minding the Law explores crucial psychological processes involved in the work of lawyers and judges: deciding whether particular cases fit within a legal rule ("categorizing"), telling stories to justify one's claims or undercut those of an adversary ("narrative"), and tailoring one's language to be persuasive without appearing partisan ("rhetorics"). Because these processes are not unique to the law, courts' decisions cannot rest solely upon legal logic but must also depend vitally upon the underlying culture's storehouse of familiar tales of heroes and villains. But a culture's stock of stories is not changeless. Amsterdam and Bruner argue that culture itself is a dialectic constantly in progress, a conflict between the established canon and newly imagined "possible worlds." They illustrate the swings of this dialectic by a masterly analysis of the Supreme Court's race-discrimination decisions during the past century. A passionate plea for heightened consciousness about the way law is practiced and made, Minding the Law/tilte will be welcomed by a new generation concerned with renewing law's commitment to a humane justice. Table of Contents: 1. Invitation to a Journey 2. On Categories 3. Categorizing at the Supreme Court Missouri v. Jenkins and Michael H. v. Gerald D. 4. On Narrative 5. Narratives at Court Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Freeman v. Pitts 6. On Rhetorics 7. The Rhetorics of Death McCleskey v. Kemp 8. On the Dialectic of Culture 9. Race, the Court, and America's Dialectic From Plessy through Brown to Pitts and Jenkins 10. Reflections on a Voyage Appendix: Analysis of Nouns and Verbs in the Prigg, Pitts, and Brown Opinions Notes Table of Cases Index Reviews of this book: Amsterdam, a distinguished Supreme Court litigator, wanted to do more than share the fruits of his practical experience. He also wanted to...get students to think about thinking like a lawyer...To decode what he calls "law-think," he enlisted the aid of the venerable cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner...[and] the collaboration has resulted in [this] unusual book. --James Ryerson, Lingua Franca Reviews of this book: It is hard to imagine a better time for the publication of Minding the Law, a brilliant dissection of the court's work by two eminent scholars, law professor Anthony G. Amsterdam and cultural anthropologist Jerome Bruner...Issue by issue, case by case, Amsterdam and Bruner make mincemeat of the court's handling of the most important constitutional issue of the modern era: how to eradicate the American legacy of race discrimination, especially against blacks. --Edward Lazarus, Los Angeles Times Book Review Reviews of this book: This book is a gem...[Its thesis] is easily stated but remarkably unrecognized among a shockingly large number of lawyers and law professors: law is a storytelling enterprise thoroughly entrenched in culture....Whereas critical legal theorists have talked among themselves for the past two decades, Amsterdam and Bruner seek to engage all of us in a dialogue. For that, they should be applauded. --Daniel R. Williams, New York Law Journal Reviews of this book: In Minding the Law, Anthony Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner show us how the Supreme Court creates the magic of inevitability. They are angry at what they see. Their book is premised on the conviction that many of the choices made in Supreme Court opinions 'lack any justification in the text'...Their method is to analyze the text of opinions and to show how the conclusions reached do not always follow from the logic of the argument. They also show how the Court casts its rhetoric like a spell, mesmerizing its audience, and making the highly contingent shine with the light of inevitability. --Mitchell Goodman, News and Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) Reviews of this book: What do controversial Supreme Court decisions and classic age-old tales of adultery, villainy, and combat have in common? Everything--at least in the eyes of [Amsterdam and Bruner]. In this substantial study, which is equal parts dense and entertaining, the authors use theoretical discussions of literary technique and myths to expose what they see as the secret intentions of Supreme Court opinions...Studying how lawyers and judges employ the various literary devices at their disposal and noting the similarities between legal thinking and classic tactics of storytelling and persuasion, they believe, can have 'astonishing consciousness-retrieving effects'...The agile minds of Amsterdam and Bruner, clearly storehouses of knowledge on a range of subjects, allow an approach that might sound far-fetched occasionally but pays dividends in the form of gained perspective--and amusement. --Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Washington Times Reviews of this book: Stories and the way judges-intentionally or not-categorize and spin them, are as responsible for legal rulings as logic and precedent, Mr. Amsterdam and Mr. Bruner said. Their novel attempt to reach into the psyche of...members of the Supreme Court is part of a growing interest in a long-neglected and cryptic subject: the psychology of judicial decision-making. --Patricia Cohen, New York Times Most law professors teach by the 'case method,' or say they do. In this fascinating book, Anthony Amsterdam--a lawyer--and Jerome Bruner--a psychologist--expose how limited most case 'analysis' really is, as they show how much can be learned through the close reading of the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that constitute an opinion (or other pieces of legal writing). Reading this book will undoubtedly make one a better lawyer, and teacher of lawyers. But the book's value and interest goes far beyond the legal profession, as it analyzes the way that rhetoric--in law, politics, and beyond--creates pictures and convictions in the minds of readers and listeners. --Sanford Levinson, author of Constitutional Faith Tony Amsterdam, the leader in the legal campaign against the death penalty, and Jerome Bruner, who has struggled for equal justice in education for forty years, have written a guide to demystifying legal reasoning. With clarity, wit, and immense learning, they reveal the semantic tricks lawyers and judges sometimes use--consciously and unconsciously--to justify the results they want to reach. --Jack Greenberg, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

Methods of Legal Reasoning

Methods of Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Jerzy Stelmach
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402049390
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Book Description
Methods of Legal Reasoning describes and criticizes four methods used in legal practice, legal dogmatics and legal theory: logic, analysis, argumentation and hermeneutics. The book takes the unusual approach of discussing in a single study four different, sometimes competing concepts of legal method. Sketched this way, the panorama allows the reader to reflect deeply on questions concerning the methodological conditioning of legal science and the existence of a unique, specific legal method.

Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory

Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory PDF Author: Neil MacCormick
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191018597
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
What makes an argument in a law case good or bad? Can legal decisions be justified by purely rational argument or are they ultimately determined by more subjective influences? These questions are central to the study of jurisprudence, and are thoroughly and critically examined in Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory, now with a new and up-to-date foreword. Its clarity of explanation and argument make this classic legal text readily accessible to lawyers, philosophers, and any general reader interested in legal processes, human reasoning, or practical logic.

A Brief Guide to Brief Writing

A Brief Guide to Brief Writing PDF Author: Janet S. Kole
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781627223041
Category : Legal briefs
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
In the third in a series of practice guides by experienced litigator Janet Kole, Covering topics that A Brief Guide to Brief Writing covers topics such as ethical principles, lower court/appellate court distinctions, and JDAs. The author's honest and direct guidelines will help shape the brief writing of both veteran and new attorneys.

Legal Reasoning

Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Melvin A. Eisenberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009192760
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
The common law, which is made by courts, consists of rules that govern relations between individuals, such as torts (the law of private wrongs) and contracts. Legal Reasoning explains and analyzes the modes of reasoning utilized by the courts in making and applying common law rules. These modes include reasoning from binding precedents (prior cases that are binding on the deciding court); reasoning from authoritative although not binding sources, such as leading treatises; reasoning from analogy; reasoning from propositions of morality, policy, and experience; making exceptions; drawing distinctions; and overruling. The book further examines and explains the roles of logic, deduction, and good judgment in legal reasoning. With accessible prose and full descriptions of illustrative cases, this book is a valuable resource for anyone who wishes to get a hands-on grasp of legal reasoning.

The Oxford Handbook of European Union Law

The Oxford Handbook of European Union Law PDF Author: Anthony Arnull
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191653055
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 950

Book Description
Since its formation the European Union has expanded beyond all expectations, and this expansion seems set to continue as more countries seek accession and the scope of EU law expands, touching more and more aspects of its citizens' lives. The EU has never been stronger and yet it now appears to be reaching a crisis point, beset on all sides by conflict and challenges to its legitimacy. Nationalist sentiment is on the rise and the Eurozone crisis has had a deep and lasting impact. EU law, always controversial, continues to perplex, not least because it remains difficult to analyse. What is the EU? An international organization, or a federation? Should its legal concepts be measured against national standards, or another norm? The Oxford Handbook of European Union Law illuminates the richness and complexity of the debates surrounding the law and policies of the EU. Comprising eight sections, it examines how we are to conceptualize EU law; the architecture of EU law; making and administering EU law; the economic constitution and the citizen; regulation of the market place; economic, monetary, and fiscal union; the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice; and what lies beyond the regulatory state. Each chapter summarizes, analyses, and reflects on the state of play in a given area, and suggests how it is likely to develop in the foreseeable future. Written by an international team of leading commentators, this Oxford Handbook creates a vivid and provocative tapestry of the key issues shaping the laws of the European Union.