This book intends to unite studies in different fields related to the development of the relations between logic, law and legal reasoning. Combining historical and philosophical studies on legal reasoning in Civil and Common Law, and on the often neglected Arabic and Talmudic traditions of jurisprudence, this project unites these areas with recent technical developments in computer science. This combination has resulted in renewed interest in deontic logic and logic of norms that stems from the interaction between artificial intelligence and law and their applications to these areas of logic. The book also aims to motivate and launch a more intense interaction between the historical and philosophical work of Arabic, Talmudic and European jurisprudence. The publication discusses new insights in the interaction between logic and law, and more precisely the study of different answers to the question: what role does logic play in legal reasoning? Varying perspectives include that of foundational studies (such as logical principles and frameworks) to applications, and historical perspectives.

This book tackles the basics of legal reasoning in twelve chapters, including the principles of classic logic, deductive and inductive reasoning, application of the Socratic method to legal reasoning, and formal and material fallacies.

A leading expert in informal logic, Douglas Walton turns his attention in this new book to how reasoning operates in trials and other legal contexts, with special emphasis on the law of evidence. The new model he develops, drawing on methods of argumentation theory that are gaining wide acceptance in computing fields like artificial intelligence, can be used to identify, analyze, and evaluate specific types of legal argument. In contrast with approaches that rely on deductive and inductive logic and rule out many common types of argument as fallacious, Walton&’s aim is to provide a more expansive view of what can be considered &"reasonable&" in legal argument when it is construed as a dynamic, rule-governed, and goal-directed conversation. This dialogical model gives new meaning to the key notions of relevance and probative weight, with the latter analyzed in terms of pragmatic criteria for what constitutes plausible evidence rather than truth.

In a book that is a blend of text and readings, Martin P. Golding explores legal reasoning from a variety of angles—including that of judicial psychology. The primary focus, however, is on the ‘logic’ of judicial decision making. How do judges justify their decisions? What sort of arguments do they use? In what ways do they rely on legal precedent? Golding includes a wide variety of cases, as well as a brief bibliographic essay (updated for this Broadview Encore Edition).

This book intends to unite studies in different fields related to the development of the relations between logic, law and legal reasoning. Combining historical and philosophical studies on legal reasoning in Civil and Common Law, and on the often neglected Arabic and Talmudic traditions of jurisprudence, this project unites these areas with recent technical developments in computer science. This combination has resulted in renewed interest in deontic logic and logic of norms that stems from the interaction between artificial intelligence and law and their applications to these areas of logic. The book also aims to motivate and launch a more intense interaction between the historical and philosophical work of Arabic, Talmudic and European jurisprudence. The publication discusses new insights in the interaction between logic and law, and more precisely the study of different answers to the question: what role does logic play in legal reasoning? Varying perspectives include that of foundational studies (such as logical principles and frameworks) to applications, and historical perspectives.

The study presented in this book was entered upon by me from a legal point of view. 'Legal logic' has been known for a long time, concerning itself with the methodology of legal and in particular judicial reasoning. In modern days, however, this 'legal logic' is sometimes also connected with modern formal logic, as it has been developed in the works of G. Boole, A. de Morgan, G. Frege, C.S. Peirce, E. Schroder, G. Peano, A.N. Whitehead, B. Russell and others. For me this gave rise to the as yet not very specific question about the meaning of modern symbolic logic for law. Already in an early stage it appeared that, although traditional legal logic and modern symbolic logic both concern logic, this may not create the misapprehension that a similar matter is at issue. Both concern themselves (among other things) with reasonings and reasoning. Traditional legal logic is, however, as it was said by the German legal theoretician K. Engisch: "a material logic that wants us to reflect on what we have to do if we -within the limits of actual possibility- wish to reach true, or at least correct judgements" (Engisch, 1964, p.5). Modern symbolic logic on the other hand is not concerned with the truth or correctness of the result of an argument, but with its validity, i.e. the question when or under which conditions the truth (correctness) of the conclusion is guaranteed by the truth (correctness) of the premisses.

This book explores relationships between law and legal reasoning, and recent developments in formal logic.