Learning to use, and defend against, informal fallacies are the keys to effective argument. This one-of-a-kind book examines informal fallacies and features a three-page Legal Logic Flow Chart to help identify the appropriate informal fallacy and counter them. Through the flow chart this book provides two legal examples on which to practice using the chart. This book is ideal for any lawyer who wants to craft a flawless argument.
This book tackles the basics of legal reasoning in twelve chapters, including the principles of classic logic, deductive and inductive reasoning, application of the Socratic method to legal reasoning, and formal and material fallacies.
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.
Studies in Legal Logic is a collection of nine interrelated papers about the logic, epistemology and ontology of law. All of the papers were written after the publication of the author’s Reasoning with Rules and supplement the issues addressed therein. Some of the papers are new; others have been revised substantially after the publication of their original versions. The emphasis is on analysis, not on logical technicalities. Studies in Legal Logic contains chapters about the nature of norms, the role of coherence in the law, the nature of defeasibility, the role of dialectics in law and artificial intelligence, the statics and dynamics of the law, and the consistency of rules. Moreover, it contains a new, simplified and yet more powerful version of Reason-based Logic and extensive examples of how it can be used for the analysis of legal reasoning. The examples deal with legal theory construction, case-based reasoning, and judicial proof.
With Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Legal Logic, Frederic R. Kellogg examines the early diaries, reading, and writings of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) to assess his contribution to both legal logic and general logical theory. Through discussions with his mentor Chauncey Wright and others, Holmes derived his theory from Francis Bacon’s empiricism, influenced by recent English debates over logic and scientific method, and Holmes’s critical response to John Stuart Mill’s 1843 A System of Logic. Conventional legal logic tends to focus on the role of judges in deciding cases. Holmes recognized input from outside the law—the importance of the social dimension of legal and logical induction: how opposing views of “many minds” may converge. Drawing on analogies from the natural sciences, Holmes came to understand law as an extended process of inquiry into recurring problems. Rather than vagueness or contradiction in the meaning or application of rules, Holmes focused on the relation of novel or unanticipated facts to an underlying and emergent social problem. Where the meaning and extension of legal terms are disputed by opposing views and practices, it is not strictly a legal uncertainty, and it is a mistake to expect that judges alone can immediately resolve the larger issue.
As a result of recent scandals concerning evidence and proof in the administration of criminal justice - ranging from innocent people on death row in the United States to misuse of statistics leading to wrongful convictions in The Netherlands and elsewhere - inquiries into the logic of evidence and proof have taken on a new urgency both in an academic and practical sense. This study presents a broad perspective on logic by focusing on inference not just in isolation but as embedded in contexts of procedure and investigation. With special attention being paid to recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and the Law, specifically related to evidentiary reasoning, this book provides clarification of problems of logic and argumentation in relation to evidence and proof. As the vast majority of legal conflicts relate to contested facts, rather than contested law, this volume concerning facts as prime determinants of legal decisions presents an important contribution to the field for both scholars and practitioners.
This book opens with a simple introduction to financial markets, attempting to understand the action and the players of Wall Street by comparing them to the action and the players of main street. Firstly, it explores the definition of a security by its function, the departure from the buyer beware environment of corporate law and the entrance into the seller disclose environment of securities law. Secondly, it shows that the cost of disclosure rules is justified by their capacity to combat irrationalities, fads, and panics. The third section explains how the structure of class actions is designed to improve deterrence. Next it explores the economic harm from insider trading and how the law fights it. In sum, the book shows how all these parts of securities law serve the virtuous cycle from liquidity to accurate prices and more trading and how the great recession showed that our securities regulation reacted mostly adequately to the crisis.
