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  1. Home
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  3. Legal Reason
  • Cited by 71
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
2005
Online ISBN:
9780511810053
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511810053
Subjects:
Law, Legal Philosophy, Philosophy, Jurisprudence
Information

Book description

Legal Reason describes and explains the process of analogical reasoning, which is the distinctive feature of legal argument. It challenges the prevailing view, urged by Edward Levi, Cass Sunstein, Richard Posner and others, which regards analogical reasoning as logically flawed or as a defective form of deductive reasoning. It shows that analogical reasoning in the law is the same as the reasoning used by all of us routinely in everyday life and that it is a valid form of reasoning derived from the innate human capacity to recognize the general in the particular, on which thought itself depends. The use of analogical reasoning is dictated by the nature of law, which requires the application of rules to particular facts. Written for scholars as well as students and persons generally who are interested in law, Legal Reason is written in clear, accessible prose, with many examples drawn from the law and from everyday experience.

Reviews

‘The author displays a rare ability to be concise and convincing, precise and gripping, ensuring that this book will serve as both a thought-provoking work to those familiar with legal thought and jurisprudence, and as an approachable book to legal novices.‘

Source: Harvard Law Review

‘Analogical reasoning is at the heart of the law - central to both judicial reasoning and legal education. Yet it has prominent doubters among both judges and legal academics. In Legal Reason, Lloyd Weinreb offers an excellent and much needed analysis and defense of analogical reasoning, one that will prove very valuable to law students and legal scholars alike.‘

Brian Bix - University of Minnesota School of Law

‘Lloyd Weinreb has written a wonderful guide to the nature of legal reasoning, one that will appeal to a diverse audience of legal scholars, law students, psychologists, sociologists, and historians. His presentation is clear, his arguments are compelling, and his perspective is truly unique. This book promises to become a landmark in the study of the law.‘

Deborah Denno - Fordham Law School

‘Lloyd Weinreb‘s new book deserves the widest possible audience. Law students struggling with basic tactics, lawyers searching for the better argument, and general readers questioning the ways of the law will all find their answers in this lucid and exciting presentation of the legal mind at work.‘

Robert A. Ferguson - Columbia Law School

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