Legal Reason: The Use of Analogy in Legal Argument

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.

• Enters explicity into current jurisprudential debate of great importance • Takes a position contrary to the standard view, taken by Edward Levi and currently by leading legal scholars • Draws on current work in developmental and cognitive psychology

Preface; Introduction; 1. Analogical and inductive and deductive reasoning; 2. Steamboats, broadcast transmissions, and electronic eavesdropping; 3. Analogical legal reasoning; 4. Analogical reasoning, legal education, and the law; Appendix A: note on analogical reasoning; Appendix B: biographical notes; Notes; Index.