legal reasoning
Arguing from precedent
Legal reasoning is the process of applying law to facts to reach conclusions.
Lawyers and judges use legal reasoning to interpret statutes, analyze precedents, and construct arguments: The court's legal reasoning relied heavily on constitutional principles.
It involves identifying relevant rules, analogizing to prior cases, and weighing competing interpretations.
Good legal reasoning anticipates counterarguments and addresses ambiguities in the law.
- precedentPrior authoritative example
- jurisprudencePhilosophy governing legal systems
- rule of lawSupremacy of established laws
- majority opinionPosition most hold
- court opinionJudge's formal written ruling
plain meaning · hermeneutics · deduction · causation · analogy · syllogism · coherence · due process · slippery slope · validity · inference · statutes · argumentation · case law · construction · ruling · burden of proof · judicial review
- Islamic Lawsharia, Sharia, Shariah, Islamic law, fatwa
- lawlaw, lawyer, lawyers, attorney, attorneys
- court recordscourt documents, court transcripts, court records, court cases, court record
- law and societysocial control, social order, rule of law, criminology, criminal justice
- law schoollaw school, law schools, law student, law students, law degree
- legal skillsopening statement, closing argument, oral argument, cross-examination, voir dire
legal reasoninggut instinct
Immediate unreasoned knowing
intuition · guesswork · snap judgment · gut feeling · impulse
legal reasoningemotional reasoning
Treating feelings as evidence
wishful thinking · prejudice · bias · mob mentality · vigilante justice
legal reasoningmoral reasoning
Evaluating right and wrong
ethical reasoning · scientific reasoning · common sense · folk wisdom · street smarts