Legal Research

"Schauer's Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning"

Posted by Joe Hodnicki: "Schauer is a leading scholar of jurisprudence and legal process, and his new book is as comprehensive, thorough, and sophisticated an introduction to legal reasoning as it is a lucid one. All of the bases are covered, and law students, teachers, practicing lawyers, and judges alike will gain perspective and insight from seeing the entire range of legal reasoning techniques laid out before them." -- Richard A. Posner, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, author of How Judges Think

From the product description of University of Virginia law prof Frederick Schauer's Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Harvard UP, 2009):

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."

The active link is available at the source site listed below.

Source: Law Librarian Blog, 16 July 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on July 16, 2009 (boomark / email).