A Primer on Legal ReasoningAfter 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. |
Contents
Issues | |
Identifying the Governing Rule of | |
al to Bargain Case | |
es of Second Thoughts | |
Levels of Abstraction | |
Review | |
References | |
Distinctions | |
Merely Identifying Differences of Fact Does Not Distinguish a Precedent | |
The Uses of Distinctions | |
Review | |
Holding and Dictum | |
Reductios ad Absurdum | |
The Criteria of a Sound Reductio ad Absurdum | |
Deduction | |
Hypothetical Syllogisms | |
haedo | |
Induction | |
Arguments in General | |
Review | |
Arguments Classified by Function | |
Arguments Based on Evidence | |
Policy Arguments | |
Evaluating Policy Arguments | |
Doctrinal Arguments | |
Review | |
Analogies and Precedents | |
Truncated Analogies | |
The Uses of Analogies | |
Subjective and Objective Standards | |
Interpreting Statutes | |
B The Principle of Wholeness | |
Prima Facie Case Affirmative Defense Burden of Proof | |
Defenses | |
References | |
Application of Law to Fact | |
Application of Law to Fact Using Precedent | |
Review | |
A Model of Legal Argument | |
Issues of Fact | |
The Value of the Model | |
Answers | |