Few areas of human expertise are so well understood that they can be completely reduced to general principles. Similarly, there are few domains in which experience is so extensive that every new problem precisely matches a previous problem whose solution is known. When neither rules nor examples are individually sufficient, problem-solving expertise depends on integrating both. This book presents a computational framework for the integration of rules and cases for analytic tasks typified by legal analysis. The book uses the framework for integrating cases and rules as a basis for a new model of legal precedents. This model explains how the theory under which a case is decided controls the case's precedential effect. The framework for integrating rules and cases is implemented in GREBE, a system for legal analysis. The book presents techniques for representing, indexing, and comparing complex cases and for converting justification structures based on rules and case into natural-language text. This book will interest researchers in artificial intelligence, particularly those involved in case-based reasoning, artificial intelligence and law, and formal models of argumentation, and to scholars in legal philosophy, jurisprudence, and analogical reasoning.

Marc Jacob analyses in depth the most important justificatory and decision-making tool of one of the world's most powerful courts.

Few areas of human expertise are so well understood that they can be completely reduced to general principles. Similarly, there are few domains in which experience is so extensive that every new problem precisely matches a previous problem whose solution is known. When neither rules nor examples are individually sufficient, problem-solving expertise depends on integrating both. This book presents a computational framework for the integration of rules and cases for analytic tasks typified by legal analysis. The book uses the framework for integrating cases and rules as a basis for a new model of legal precedents. This model explains how the theory under which a case is decided controls the case's precedential effect. The framework for integrating rules and cases is implemented in GREBE, a system for legal analysis. The book presents techniques for representing, indexing, and comparing complex cases and for converting justification structures based on rules and case into natural-language text. This book will interest researchers in artificial intelligence, particularly those involved in case-based reasoning, artificial intelligence and law, and formal models of argumentation, and to scholars in legal philosophy, jurisprudence, and analogical reasoning.

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.

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 primer on legal reasoning is aimed at law students and upper-level undergraduates. But it is also an original exposition of basic legal concepts that scholars and lawyers will find stimulating. It covers such topics as rules, precedent, authority, analogical reasoning, the common law, statutory interpretation, legal realism, judicial opinions, legal facts, and burden of proof. In addressing the question whether legal reasoning is distinctive, Frederick Schauer emphasizes the formality and rule-dependence of law. When taking the words of a statute seriously, when following a rule even when it does not produce the best result, when treating the fact of a past decision as a reason for making the same decision again, or when relying on authoritative sources, the law embodies values other than simply that of making the best decision for the particular occasion or dispute. In thus pursuing goals of stability, predictability, and constraint on the idiosyncrasies of individual decision-makers, the law employs forms of reasoning that may not be unique to it but are far more dominant in legal decision-making than elsewhere. Schauer’s analysis of what makes legal reasoning special will be a valuable guide for students while also presenting a challenge to a wide range of current academic theories.

After years of teaching law courses to undergraduate, graduate, and law students, Michael Evan Gold has come to believe that the traditional way of teaching – analysis, explanation, and example – is superior to the Socratic Method for students at the outset of their studies. In courses taught Socratically, even the most gifted students can struggle, and many others are lost in a fog for months. Gold offers a meta approach to teaching legal reasoning, bringing the process of argumentation to the fore. Using examples both from the law and from daily life, Gold's book will help undergraduates and first-year law students to understand legal discourse. The book analyzes and illustrates the principles of legal reasoning, such as logical deduction, analogies and distinctions, and application of law to fact, and even solves the mystery of how to spot an issue. In Gold's experience, students who understand the principles of analytical thinking are able to understand arguments, to evaluate and reply to them, and ultimately to construct sound arguments of their own.