What Have Introductory Books on Legal Reasoning Ever Done for Us?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14296/ac.v6i1.5726Abstract
The purpose of this article is to investigate, and to review, a number of recent introductions to law with the emphasis being on those introducing students to legal reasoning. The investigation will have as its focus not just reasoning methodology but equally the ontological and epistemological foundations upon which the reasoning is based. The investigation will be comparative in its orientation; it will examine, in particular, works from common lawyers and French jurists, with references also to books produced by Roman law specialists (Romanists). It will show that many introductions are based on an ontological foundation that emphasizes rules—the rule model—and that, with regard to some of the introductory books, this emphasis has engendered what is arguably a simplistic view of legal knowledge and method. Are such books, it might be asked, epistemologically reliable? To help answer this question, another comparative orientation to be undertaken is to examine some introductory works in the social sciences in order to see not only how these works may differ in their approach to knowledge and methodology but also how methodological discussions in the social sciences could be valuable for lawyers.
Keywords: analogy; epistemology; introductions; logic; ontology; perception; rule model; syllogism.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Those who contribute items to Amicus Curiae retain author copyright in their work but are asked to grant two licences. One is a licence to the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, enabling us to reproduce the item in digital form, so that it can be made available for access online in the open journal system, repository, and website. The terms of the licence which you are asked to grant to the University for this purpose are as follows:
'I grant to the University of London the irrevocable, non-exclusive royalty-free right to reproduce, distribute, display, and perform this work in any format including electronic formats throughout the world for educational, research, and scientific non-profit uses during the full term of copyright including renewals and extensions'.
The other licence is for the benefit of those who wish to make use of items published online in Amicus Curiae and stored in the e-repository. For this purpose we use a Creative Commons licence (http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/); which allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to your entry in Amicus Curiae and/or SAS-SPACE; but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially.
