Tactics of Legal Reasoning
| Author | : Pierre Schlag |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 105 |
| Release | : 1986 |
| Genre | : Law |
| ISBN | : 9780890893098 |
Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing
| Author | : Richard K. Neumann |
| Publisher | : Aspen Publishers |
| Total Pages | : 524 |
| Release | : 1994 |
| Genre | : Law |
| ISBN | : |
The Five Types of Legal Argument
| Author | : Wilson Ray Huhn |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2008 |
| Genre | : Judicial process |
| ISBN | : 9781594605161 |
The Five Types of Legal Argument succeeds both as a work of legal theory and as a practical guide to legal reasoning for law students, lawyers, and judges. Huhn introduces each concept separately, and from many parts Huhn develops an intricate and nuanced theory of what law is. Huhn also shows readers how to identify, create, attack, and evaluate the five types of legal arguments (text, intent, precedent, tradition, and policy) and how to weave the different types of arguments together to make them more persuasive. The Second Edition of this book further develops both the theoretical and practical themes of the work. In this edition Huhn introduces two additional ways of attacking legal arguments, and in a new chapter he utilizes principles of deductive logic to demonstrate the validity of the theory of the five types of legal arguments. The principal strength of this book is its clarity. The book is written in plain language that is easily understood both by lay persons and professionals, and it is organized simply and logically. Reviewers and legal scholars have described the book as "fascinating" and "masterful." The Five Types of Legal Argument is required reading at a number of leading American law schools, and it is recommended for anyone who wishes to understand how to construct and how to critique legal arguments. "I found The Five Types of Legal Argument to be invaluable because it succinctly breaks down legal analysis. At first, reading judicial opinions, especially with majority and dissenting opinions, can be a dizzying experience. But when you break down the arguments you learn to spot appeals to different types of reasoning. The reward is two-fold: First, you can more easily understand judicial opinions and can criticize or appreciate them on a more sophisticated level. Second, the five types of legal arguments become a checklist of tools that you can invoke to make persuasive legal arguments of your own." Bryce Landier, former law student "The Five Types of Legal Argument contains two of the top three most valuable pages that I have read during my time in law school." Whit Pierce, law student "The Five Types of Legal Argument will help you shift the way you read from simply understanding and memorizing legal texts to critically analyzing and interpreting the text and the arguments made within the text. I wish I read this book during my 1L year." Kathleen Rose, law student "This book will help you read, it will help you write, and it will help you think clearly about the arguments that are made in legal discourse." Jonathan Williams, law student "In law school, professors always tell us not to focus on the trees, but to step back and see the forest when analyzing legal issues. This book certainly furthers that well-reasoned approach." Amanda Johnson, law student "The book serve[s] as a fine introduction to legal analysis and indicate to students the importance of identifying the categories of legal argument they encounter." Ben Wiles, law student
Force of Logic
| Author | : Stephen M. Rice |
| Publisher | : Aspen Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 429 |
| Release | : 2017-05-03 |
| Genre | : Law |
| ISBN | : 1601566107 |
Have you ever read a legal opinion and come across an odd term like the fallacy of denying the antecedent, the fallacy of the undistributed middle, or the fallacy of the illicit process and wondered how you missed that in law school? You’re not alone: every day, lawyers make arguments that fatally trespass the rules of formal logic—without realizing it—because traditional legal education often overlooks imparting the practical wisdom of ancient philosophy as it teaches students how to “think like a lawyer.” In his book, The Force of Logic: Using Formal Logic as a Tool in the Craft of Legal Argument, lawyer and law professor Stephen M. Rice guides you to develop your powers of legal reasoning in a new way, through effective tips and tactics that will forever change the way you argue your cases. Rice contends that formal logic provides tools that help lawyers distinguish good arguments from bad ones and, moreover, that they are simple to learn and use. When you know how to recognize logical fallacies, you will not only strengthen your own arguments, but you will also be able to punch holes in your opponent’s—and that can make the difference between winning and losing. In this book, Rice builds on the theoretical foundation of formal logic by demonstrating logical fallacies through the use of anecdotes, examples, graphical illustrations, and exercises for you to try that are derived from common case documents. It is a hands-on primer that presents a practical approach for understanding and mastering the place of formal logic in the art of legal reasoning. Whether you are a lawyer, a judge, a scholar, or a student, The Force of Logic will inspire you to love legal argument, and appreciate its beauty and complexity in a brand new way.
Legal Argument
| Author | : James A. Gardner |
| Publisher | : LexisNexis/Matthew Bender |
| Total Pages | : 196 |
| Release | : 2007 |
| Genre | : Law |
| ISBN | : |
Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy is a full-featured guide designed primarily for law students in research, writing, analysis and trial advocacy classes and moot court programs. Inside you'll find detailed explanations of how lawyers construct legal arguments and practical guidelines to the process of molding the raw materials of litigation--cases, statutes, testimony, documents, common sense--into instruments of persuasive advocacy. You'll also find writing guidelines that show you how to present a well-constructed legal argument in writing in a way that legal decision makers will find persuasive. The centerpiece of this indispensable work is its syllogism-based step-by-step method, designed to walk the advocate through the process of crafting a winning argument. Intuitive organization presents the material in five parts: Part I sets out a general methodology for constructing legal arguments. Part II focuses more closely on the construction of persuasive, well-grounded legal premises, and covers the effective integration of legal doctrine and evidence into the argument's structure. Part III shows how to put the method to work by giving two detailed examples of the construction of complete legal arguments from scratch. Part IV provides a detailed protocol for reducing well-constructed legal arguments to written form, along with a concrete illustration of that process. It also provides concrete advice on how to recognize and avoid a host of common mistakes in the written presentation of legal arguments. Part V moves from the basics into more advanced techniques of persuasive legal argument, including rhetorical tactics like framing and emphasis, how to respond to arguments, maintaining professionalism in advocacy, and the ethical limits of argument.
Scare Tactics
| Author | : Douglas Walton |
| Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
| Total Pages | : 216 |
| Release | : 2013-06-29 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 9401729409 |
Scare Tactics, the first book on the subject, provides a theory of the structure of reasoning used in fear and threat appeal argumentation. Such arguments come under the heading of the argumentum ad baculum, the `argument to the stick/club', traditionally treated as a fallacy in the logic textbooks. The new dialectical theory is based on case studies of many interesting examples of the use of these arguments in advertising, public relations, politics, international negotiations, and everyday argumentation on all kinds of subjects. Many of these arguments are amusing, once you see the clever tactic used; others are scary. Some of the arguments appear to be quite reasonable, while others are highly suspicious, or even outrageously fraudulent. In addition to the examples taken from logic textbooks, other cases treated come from a variety of sources, including political debates, legal arguments, and arguments from media sources, like magazine articles and television ads. The purpose of this book is to explain how such arguments work as devices of persuasion, and to develop a method for analyzing and evaluating their reasonable and fallacious uses in particular cases. The book shows how such arguments share a common structure, revealing several distinctive forms of argument nested within each other. Based on its account of this cognitive structure, the new dialectical theory presents methods for identifying, analyzing, and evaluating these arguments, as they are used in specific cases. The book is a scholarly contribution to argumentation theory. It is written in an accessible style, and uses many colorful and provocative examples of fear and threat appeal arguments that are suitable for classroom discussions. The matters treated will be of interest to professionals and students in law, critical thinking, advertising, speech communication, informal logic, cognitive science, rhetoric, and media studies.
Model Rules of Professional Conduct
| Author | : American Bar Association. House of Delegates |
| Publisher | : American Bar Association |
| Total Pages | : 216 |
| Release | : 2007 |
| Genre | : Law |
| ISBN | : 9781590318737 |
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Thinking Like a Lawyer
| Author | : Frederick F. Schauer |
| Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
| Total Pages | : 256 |
| Release | : 2009-04-27 |
| Genre | : Law |
| ISBN | : 0674032705 |
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.
