Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict

Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict PDF Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190864443
Category : LAW
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Introduction -- Reasoning and legal reasoning -- Incompletely theorized agreements -- Analogical reasoning -- Trimming -- Understanding (and misunderstanding) the rule of law -- In defense of casuistry -- Without reasons, without rules -- Adapting rules, privately and publicly -- Interpretation -- Conclusion

Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict

Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict PDF Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190864443
Category : LAW
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Introduction -- Reasoning and legal reasoning -- Incompletely theorized agreements -- Analogical reasoning -- Trimming -- Understanding (and misunderstanding) the rule of law -- In defense of casuistry -- Without reasons, without rules -- Adapting rules, privately and publicly -- Interpretation -- Conclusion

Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict

Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict PDF Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195353498
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
The most glamorous and even glorious moments in a legal system come when a high court recognizes an abstract principle involving, for example, human liberty or equality. Indeed, Americans, and not a few non-Americans, have been greatly stirred--and divided--by the opinions of the Supreme Court, especially in the area of race relations, where the Court has tried to revolutionize American society. But these stirring decisions are aberrations, says Cass R. Sunstein, and perhaps thankfully so. In Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict, Sunstein, one of America's best known commentators on our legal system, offers a bold, new thesis about how the law should work in America, arguing that the courts best enable people to live together, despite their diversity, by resolving particular cases without taking sides in broader, more abstract conflicts. Sunstein offers a close analysis of the way the law can mediate disputes in a diverse society, examining how the law works in practical terms, and showing that, to arrive at workable, practical solutions, judges must avoid broad, abstract reasoning. Why? For one thing, critics and adversaries who would never agree on fundamental ideals are often willing to accept the concrete details of a particular decision. Likewise, a plea bargain for someone caught exceeding the speed limit need not--indeed, must not--delve into sweeping issues of government regulation and personal liberty. Thus judges purposely limit the scope of their decisions to avoid reopening large-scale controversies. Sunstein calls such actions incompletely theorized agreements. In identifying them as the core feature of legal reasoning--and as a central part of constitutional thinking in America, South Africa, and Eastern Europe-- he takes issue with advocates of comprehensive theories and systemization, from Robert Bork (who champions the original understanding of the Constitution) to Jeremy Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, and Ronald Dworkin, who defends an ambitious role for courts in the elaboration of rights. Equally important, Sunstein goes on to argue that it is the living practice of the nation's citizens that truly makes law. For example, he cites Griswold v. Connecticut, a groundbreaking case in which the Supreme Court struck down Connecticut's restrictions on the use of contraceptives by married couples--a law that was no longer enforced by prosecutors. In overturning the legislation, the Court invoked the abstract right of privacy; the author asserts that the justices should have appealed to the narrower principle that citizens need not comply with laws that lack real enforcement. By avoiding large-scale issues and values, such a decision could have led to a different outcome in Bowers v. Hardwick, the decision that upheld Georgia's rarely prosecuted ban on sodomy. And by pointing to the need for flexibility over time and circumstances, Sunstein offers a novel understanding of the old ideal of the rule of law. Legal reasoning can seem impenetrable, mysterious, baroque. This book helps dissolve the mystery. Whether discussing the interpretation of the Constitution or the spell cast by the revolutionary Warren Court, Cass Sunstein writes with grace and power, offering a striking and original vision of the role of the law in a diverse society. In his flexible, practical approach to legal reasoning, he moves the debate over fundamental values and principles out of the courts and back to its rightful place in a democratic state: the legislatures elected by the people.

Reason in Law

Reason in Law PDF Author: Lief H. Carter
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022632821X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Newly updated ninth edition: “A superbly written, pedagogically rich, historically and conceptually informed introduction to legal reasoning.” —Law and Politics Book Review Over the decades it has been in print, Reason in Law has established itself as the place to start for understanding legal reasoning, a critical component of the rule of law. This ninth edition brings the book’s analyses and examples up to date, adding new cases while retaining old ones whose lessons remain potent. It examines several recent controversial Supreme Court decisions, including rulings on the constitutionality and proper interpretation of the Affordable Care Act and Justice Scalia’s powerful dissent in Maryland v. King. Also new to this edition are cases on same-sex marriage, the Voting Rights Act, and the legalization of marijuana. A new appendix explains the historical evolution of legal reasoning and the rule of law in civic life. The result is an indispensable introduction to the workings of the law.

Thinking Like a Lawyer

Thinking Like a Lawyer PDF Author: Kenneth J. Vandevelde
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429973888
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Law students, law professors, and lawyers frequently refer to the process of "thinking like a lawyer," but attempts to analyze in any systematic way what is meant by that phrase are rare. In his classic book, Kenneth J. Vandevelde defines this elusive phrase and identifies the techniques involved in thinking like a lawyer. Unlike most legal writings, which are plagued by difficult, virtually incomprehensible language, this book is accessible and clearly written and will help students, professionals, and general readers gain important insight into this well-developed and valuable way of thinking. Updated for a new generation of lawyers, the second edition features a new chapter on contemporary perspectives on legal reasoning. A useful new appendix serves as a survival guide for current and prospective law students and describes how to apply the techniques in the book to excel in law school.

Reason in Law

Reason in Law PDF Author: Lief H. Carter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226340494
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Over the years, Reason in Law has established itself as the leading textbook for courses in legal reasoning, a critical aspect of the rule of law. This eighth edition brings the book's analyses and examples fully up to date, adding new cases while retaining old ones whose lessons remain potent. It takes full account of the dramatic changes--and challenges--to legal reasoning that emerged from the Bush administration's attempts to fight terrorism and also explores recent conflicts over same-sex marriage, gun control, hate crimes, and climate change. The result is an indispensable introduction to an issue that lies at the heart of the workings of the law.

Advanced Introduction to Legal Reasoning

Advanced Introduction to Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Larry Alexander
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1789903157
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This insightful and highly readable Advanced Introduction provides a succinct, yet comprehensive, overview of legal reasoning, covering both reasoning from canonical texts and legal decision-making in the absence of rules. Overall, it argues that there are only two methods by which judges decide legal disputes: deductive reasoning from rules and unconstrained moral, practical, and empirical reasoning.

Legal Reasoning

Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Duncan Kennedy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
La 4e de couverture indique : "Legal reasoning : collected essays includes four essays written over a twenty-year span that present a comprehensive and original account of legal reasoning as done by judges, lawyers, and legal academics. In a work that is likely to become the definitive introduction to critical legal theory by a leading theorist of the critical legal studies movement, the author has been the first to put together in a systematic way the insights of American legal realism with continental phenomenology and semiotics. His version of legal reasoning presents it as "work in a medium" deploying a set of "argument-bites" analogous to the words of a language. The result is simultaneous freedom and constraint. Kennedy then turns his approach to a critique of current European legal theory, with an essay on Hart and Kelsen and another on the approach of the European jurists pre-occupied with "coherence" and with the "European social model" in the current process of harmonization of European law."

The Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice of the EU

The Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice of the EU PDF Author: Gunnar Beck
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178225031X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
The Court of Justice of the European Union has often been characterised both as a motor of integration and a judicial law-maker. To what extent is this a fair description of the Court's jurisprudence over more than half a century? The book is divided into two parts. Part one develops a new heuristic theory of legal reasoning which argues that legal uncertainty is a pervasive and inescapable feature of primary legal material and judicial reasoning alike, which has its origin in a combination of linguistic vagueness, value pluralism and rule instability associated with precedent. Part two examines the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU against this theoretical framework. The author demonstrates that the ECJ's interpretative reasoning is best understood in terms of a tripartite approach whereby the Court justifies its decisions in terms of the cumulative weight of purposive, systemic and literal arguments. That approach is more in line with orthodox legal reasoning in other legal systems than is commonly acknowledged and differs from the approach of other higher, especially constitutional courts, more in degree than in kind. It nevertheless leaves the Court considerable discretion in determining the relative weight and ranking of the various interpretative criteria from one case to another. The Court's exercise of its discretion is best understood in terms of the constraints imposed by the accepted justificatory discourse and certain extra-legal steadying factors of legal reasoning, which include a range of political factors such as sensitivity to Member States' interests, political fashion and deference to the 'EU legislator'. In conclusion, the Court of Justice of the EU has used the flexibility inherent in its interpretative approach and the choice it usually enjoys in determining the relative weight and order of the interpretative criteria at its disposal, to resolve legal uncertainty in the EU primary legal materials in a broadly communautaire fashion subject, however, to i) regard to the political, constitutional and budgetary sensitivities of Member States, ii) depending on the constraints and extent of interpretative manoeuvre afforded by the degree of linguistic vagueness of the provisions in question, the relative status of and degree of potential conflict between the applicable norms, and the range and clarity of the interpretative topoi available to resolve first-order legal uncertainty, and, finally, iii) bearing in mind the largely unpredictable personal element in all adjudication. Only in exceptional cases which the Court perceives to go to the heart of the integration process and threaten its acquis communautaire, is the Court of Justice likely not to feel constrained by either the wording of the norms in issue or by the ordinary conventions of interpretative argumentation, and to adopt a strongly communautaire position, if need be in disregard of what the written laws says but subject to the proviso that the Court is assured of the express or tacit approval or acquiescence of national governments and courts.

Legal Reasoning Across Commercial Disputes

Legal Reasoning Across Commercial Disputes PDF Author: S. I. Strong
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780198842842
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This work provides important insights into how judges and arbitrators resolve complex commercial disputes in both national and international settings. The analysis is built from three major research sources which ensures that the analysis can bridge evidence of perception, behaviours, and outcomes amongst judges and arbitrators. A statistical survey provides a benchmark and point of comparison with the subjective statements arising from an extensive programme of interviews and questionnaires to provide an objective lens on the reasoning process that informs decisions and awards in practice. The outcome, presented in Legal Reasoning across Commercial Disputes, is an evidence-based model of the determining factors in legal reasoning by identifying and quantifying approximately seventy-five objective markers for which data can be compared across the arbitral-judicial, domestic-international, and common law-civil law divides. The methodology provides for a thorough and contextual assessment of legal reasoning by judges and arbitrators in commercial disputes. Legal Reasoning across Commercial Disputes investigates the level of sophistication and complexity associated with commercial arbitration relative to commercial litigation through domestic courts. The study not only helps parties make more informed choices about where and how to resolve their legal disputes, it also assists judges and arbitrators in carrying out their duties by improving counsel's understanding about how to best to craft and present legal arguments and submissions. The study also addresses longstanding theoretical concerns about the legitimacy of national and international commercial arbitration by replacing assumptions and anecdotes with objective data. The final part of the book draws together the various strands of analysis and concludes with a number of forward-looking proposals about how a deeper understanding of legal and judicial reasoning can be established to improve the quality of decisions and outcomes for all parties.

An Introduction to Legal Reasoning

An Introduction to Legal Reasoning PDF Author: Edward H. Levi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description