Rule Based Reasoning Legal Writing

I take this opportunity to thank those who created this article with the useful information that has been so useful to me in my legal research as a law student. Good insightful article. Inductive reasoning is an argument from the specific to the general. Lawyers use inductive reasoning to synthesize rules. In other words, lawyers take inventories of several cases and, by grouping these specific cases together, they establish a general rule. To summarize a rule, consider the similarities between the facts of the precedents and the differences between the facts of the precedents. Also look at the reasons for stocks. Understanding the basic features of the functional logic of truth will help you analyze legal arguments. Functional connectives of truth, conditionals, conjunctions and disjunctions, as well as logical notation for simple sentences, serve to reveal the form of a legal argument. Distinguishing cases is the opposite of reasoning by analogy. In distinguishing the cases, it is argued that the facts of precedent do not coincide with the facts of the present case, so that the rule of precedent is not applicable in this case. For example, a toy poodle is not like a wild animal because toy poodles are not inherently dangerous, so the wildlife case rule that the owner of a wild animal is strictly liable for damage caused by that wild animal should not apply to toy poodles. There are several important concepts in legal reasoning that you should be aware of.

As with all arguments, legal arguments contain at least one premise and can be estimated and understood if you are able to grasp the underlying logic. Legal discourse has developed models and conventions that we can recognize and apply to concrete legal cases. Legal reasoning is also known as „rules-based reasoning,“ which means it follows certain rules. For example, a rule that specifies a test with mandatory items lists all the necessary conditions that must be met for the rule to apply. The first skill that law schools teach their students is case presentation, or as I prefer to call it, case analysis. However, law schools often teach this skill superficially. In this paper, I present a more rigorous approach to case analysis by including in the rationale section the types of reasoning (rules-based reasoning, analytical reasoning, case distinction, policy-based reasoning, synthesis) that a judge uses and how he or she uses these types of reasoning to maintain participation. Rules-based reasoning is the most important type of legal reasoning. In rule-based reasoning, you take a rule (a law or case law) and apply it to a set of facts (this is a type of deductive reasoning). Richard Neumann found that rules consist of at least three parts: „(1) a set of elements, collectively called a test; (2) a result that occurs when all items are present (and the test is thus completed); and (3). a causal term that determines whether the outcome is mandatory, prohibitive, discretionary or declaratory.

(Richard K. Neumann, Jr., Legal Reasoning and Legal Writing: Structure, Strategy, and Style 16 (2005). In addition, some rules have „one or more exceptions that, if present, would cancel out the result, even if all the elements are present“. (Ibid.) An example of a rule would be the intentional infliction of emotional harm when (1) the defendant`s conduct is outrageous, (2) the defendant`s conduct is intentional, (3) the defendant`s conduct causes severe emotional distress, and (4) causes severe emotional distress. The rule would be satisfied if the facts of this case fulfilled all the elements of the rule. For example, if an ex-boyfriend calls an ex-girlfriend several times in the middle of the night to harass her (outrageous behaviour; intentional behaviour) and it causes her severe emotional distress (causality) (element 4), deliberate emotional stress has occurred. Keywords: case analysis, legal writing, legal education Analogy to argue concerns the search for similarities. Similar reasoning exists in law when it is argued that the facts of precedent are similar to those of the present case, so that the rule of precedent should apply to the present case. (A is like B, so A`s rule applies to B.) An example of analogous reasoning is that the rule that a person who keeps a wild animal like a tiger on his property is strictly liable for any damage caused by that animal also applies to pit bulls, because a pit bull, while not a wild animal, is inherently dangerous, just like a wild animal. Both cases are never accurate; Arguing the analogy is a matter of degree. The author must convince the reader that the facts of the two cases are so similar that the rule of precedent should be applicable to the present case. Reason: Tigers, which are wild animals, and pit bulls, which are aggressively bred, are inherently dangerous, while toy poodles are not.

When two innocent parties are involved, the law usually holds the party responsible for dangerous things like wild animals. The rule applies to both bodily injury and property damage. Legal reasoning proceeds in a deductive or inductive manner, but it is important to remember that these terms are defined a little more narrowly in legal reasoning than in logic. In law, deductive reasoning generally means moving from the general to the specific, that is, from the establishment of a rule to its application to a particular legal case. Many legal textbooks refer to inductive reasoning as the process of moving from the specific to the general.