Legal Reasoning

Melvin Aron Eisenberg is Jesse H. Choper Professor of Law Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley Law School. He is the author of The Nature of the Common Law and Foundational Principles of Contract Law.

• Preface; 1. A brief introduction to the common law; 2. The rule-based model of legal reasoning; 3. Reasoning from precedent and the principle of stare decisis; 4. How it is determined what rule a precedent establishes; 5. Reasoning from authoritative although not legally binding legal rules; 6. The role of social morality, social policy, and empirical propositions in legal reasoning and the judicial adoption of new legal rules based on social propositions; 7. Legal rules, principles, and standards; 8. The malleability of legal rules; 9. Hiving off new legal rules, creating exceptions to established rules, and distinguishing; 10. Reasoning from analogy; 11. The roles of logic, deduction, and good judgement in legal reasoning; 12. Reasoning from hypotheticals; 13. Overruling.

'In Legal Reasoning, Melvin Eisenberg has produced a short but quite comprehensive and readable overview of the forms of reasoning employed by lawyers and judges, with copious examples drawn from the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the common law.' Larry Alexander, Warren Distinguished Professor, University of San Diego School of Law