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The nature of legal reasoning: a commentary with special reference to Professor MacCormick's theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Alida Wilson
Alida Wilson*
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
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Extract

‘Legal reasoning’ and its character have been under discussion for some time: the character, that is, of the reasoning which judges, advocates, solicitors, and others engaged in matters of legal practice and decision must pursue if their conclusions are to claim validity. Do they – or should they – reason on lines dictated by the laws of formal logic, i.e. deductively in the strict sense of that term? Or must we say that judges, and lawyers in general, cannot reach or justify conclusions on deductive lines, and that in fact – and quite legitimately – they use, in establishing and justifying conclusions, a mode of reasoning which is not deductive but has a quite different determinate character of its own? If so, what is that determinate character? Does it provide criteria whereby we may appriase legal argumentation in particular instances as valid or invalid or, at least, as rational or failing in rationality?

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , November 1982 , pp. 269 - 285
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 1982

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References

1. Lloyd, , ‘Reason and Logic in the Common Law’, (1948) 64 Law Quarterly Review 468 ffGoogle Scholar. Jensen, , The Nature of Legal Argument (Blackwell, Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar; Gottlieb, G. The Logic of Choice (Allen & Unwin, London, 1968)Google Scholar.

2. Smith, T. B. Judicial Precedent in Scots Law (Edinburgh, 1952)Google Scholar; Walker, David Scottish Legal System (Green & Son, Edinburgh, 1976)Google Scholar; H. L. A. Hart ‘Philosophy of Law’ in The Encyclopedia of Philosophv (1967).

3. Harris, J. W. Legal Philosophies (Oxford, 1980)Google Scholar; A. Guest ‘Logic in Law’ in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence. First Series (1960).

4. For these two books see Note 1, above.

5. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978.

6. Op. cit. p. 19.

7. Ibid..

8. [1938] 4 All ER 258.

9. Op. cit. pp. 19–20.

10. [1938] 4 All ER 263–264.

11. Op. cit. p. 29.

12. Ibid..

13. Ibid..

14. MacCormick op. cit. p. 30.

15. Grant v Australian Knitting Mills [1936] AC 85 at 100.

16. Op. cit. p. 30.

17. Aristotle de Interpretatione 17a 1 quoted by Eaton, R., General Logic (London, 1931) p. 19 Google Scholar.

18. Chalmers Sale of Goods (18th edn, Butterworths, London, 1981) pp. 127ff.

19. The line of criticism against MacCormick's deductivist theory advanced in this paper is based on the arguments put forward by the philosophers Jensen, O. C. in The Nature of Legal Argument (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar, and Gottlieb, Gidon in The Logic of Choice, (London, 1968)Google Scholar.

20. MacCormick Op. cit. p. 31.

21. Grant v Australian Knitting Mills [1936] AC 85 at 100.

22. Cammell Laird & Co v Manganese Bronze [1934] AC at 430.

23. MacCormick Op. cit. pp. 25 and 31. Simplified.

24. [1938] 4 All ER at 259.

25. Ibid., p. 263.

26. [1978] 1 All ER at 816.

27. [1978] 1 All ER at 816.

28. Dobson, A. P. Sale of Goods and Consumer Credit (Sweet and Maxwell, 1979) p 86 Google Scholar.

29. MacCormick op. cit. p. 28, footnote 5.

30. Mitchell, David An Introduction to Logic (London, 1962) p. 49 and pp. 61ffGoogle Scholar.

31. David Mitchell op. cit. pp 61ff.

32. David Mitchell Op. cit. pp. 66 with 82.

33. MacCormick Op. cit. pp. 24 and 28.

34. Ibid., p. 44.

35. Ibid., p. 44.