This Short Introduction looks at judging and reasoning from three perspectives: what legal reasoning has been: what legal reasoning is from the view of judges and jurists: and what legal reasoning is from the view of a social scientist epistemologist or humanities specialist. Geoffrey Samuel begins by identifying the main institutional focal points of legal reasoning (ius, regulae iuris, Interpretatio, utilitas and actiones). While examining legal reasoning from both an internal and external viewpoint, the book simultaneously incorporates theory and scholarship from a range of other disciplines including social science and film studies.
The author also includes a discussion of fiction theory, schemes of intelligibility, and other epistemological issues as well as standard reasoning devices such as induction, deduction and analogy.
