Postgraduate Course: Advanced Legal Reasoning (LAWS11513)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The aims of this course are to familiarize students with current trends in the theory of legal reasoning and develop a critical attitude towards the received view about the content and proper scope of a theory legal reasoning. |
| Course description |
This course discusses new trends and directions in the field of legal reasoning. The topics to be covered this year include the following: a) the general and the particular in legal reasoning; b) reflexion and
perception in legal decision-making; c) cognition and emotion in legal reasoning; d) description and choice in legal argument; and e) balancing and specification in law. The analysis of these five contrasting pairs will pave the way for a sustained critique of standard conceptions of legal reasoning.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 25 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course will be assessed by one 5,000-word essay (100%).«br /»
The essay question(s) will be made available in week 5.«br /»
Essays will be assessed for content as well as clarity and argument structure. |
| Feedback |
We will spend around 20 minutes in weeks 3, 4, 5 and 6 discussing collectively about how to read a philosophy text, how to write an essay in legal philosophy, and how to revise an essay. In week 7 and 8 we will discuss samples of abstracts of the papers that will be written by some of the students in class. In weeks 9 and 10 we will discuss samples of argumentative structures of the papers to be written by some of the students in class. Material for these exercises and feedback will be available in LEARN. These formative feedback exercises will help the students prepare for their summative assessment.
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| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Students will broad and deepen their knowledge of legal reasoning
- They will have an understanding of diverse paradigms and recent trends in the field of legal reasoning
- Students will learn about different tools and methodologies that may be applied to study legal argument
- They will be able to analyze and evaluate different positions in contemporary debates in legal reasoning
- Students will learn to examine topics in legal argumentation from a variety of disciplinary perspectives
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Reading List
'Reading' is material that will be discussed in the corresponding seminar and students are expected to read them in advance. Materials marked as 'Further reading' is not
required reading, but suggestions for further reading for students who wish to pursue a topic in greater depth.
WEEK 1: THE RECEIVED VIEW OF LEGAL REASONING: A CRITIQUE
Reading
Spellman, B. A. and Schauer, F. 'Legal Reasoning,' K. J. Holyoak and R. G. Morrison (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, pp. 719-735, Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 2012.
Further reading
Schauer, F., Thinking like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2009.
WEEK 2: THE GENERAL VS. THE PARTICULAR (I)
Reading
Dancy, J. "Moral Particularism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL
= «https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/moralparticularism/».
Further reading:
Timmons, M. Moral Theory: An Introduction, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, chapter 11.
WEEK 3: THE GENERAL VS. THE PARTICULAR (II)
Reading
MacCormick, N., Rhetoric and the Rule of Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 79-120.
Further reading
Bankowski, Z. and J. MacLean (eds.), The Universal and the Particular in Legal Reasoning, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006.
WEEK 4: REFLECTION AND INTUITION (I)
Reading
Crowe, J. 'Not-so-Easy Cases,' Statutory Law Review, vol. 40 (1), 2019, pp. 75-86.
Further reading
Zygmun, T., 'An Intuitive Approach to Hard Cases,' Utrecht Law Review, 16 (1), 2020, pp. 21-38.
WEEK 5: REFLECTION AND INTUITION (II)
Reading
Michelon, C. 'Lawfulness and the Perception of Legal Salience,' A. Amaya and C. Michelon (eds.), The Faces of Virtue in Law, Rutgers, New York, 2020, pp. 47-57.
Further reading
van Domselaar, I., 'The Perceptive Judge,' Jurisprudence, vol. 9, 2018, pp. 71-87.
WEEK 6: EMOTION AND COGNITION (I)
Reading
Bandes, S. and Blumenthal, J. 'Law and the Emotion,' The Annual Review of Law and Social Science, vol. 8, 2012, pp. 161-181.
Further reading
Maroney, T. 'Law and Emotion: A Proposed Taxonomy of an Emerging Field,' Law and Human Behavior, vol. 30, 2006.
WEEK 7: EMOTION AND COGNITION (II)
Reading
Zipursky, B. 'Austerity, Compassion and the Rule of Law,' A. Amaya and M. Del Mar (eds.), Virtue, Emotion and Imagination in Law and Legal Reasoning, Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2020, pp. 59-77.
Sherman, N. Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 39-52.
Further reading
Kind, A. 'Empathy, Imagination and the Law,' A. Amaya and M. Del Mar (eds.), Virtue, Emotion and Imagination in Law and Legal Reasoning, Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2020, pp.179-199.
WEEK 8: CHOICE AND DESCRIPTION (I)
Reading
Van Domselaar, I. 'All Judges on Couch? On Iris Murdoch and Legal Decision-Making' in A. Amaya and M. Del Mar (eds.), Virtue, Emotion and Imagination in Law and Legal Reasoning, Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2020, pp. 77-101.
Further reading
Murdoch, I. 'The Idea of Perfection,' in I. Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, Routledge, London, 1970.
WEEK 9: MEANS AND ENDS (I)
Reading
R. Alexy, 'On Balancing and Subsumption: A Structural Comparison,' Ratio Iuris, vol. 16 (3), 2003, pp. 433-449.
Further reading
Bongiovanni, G. and Valentini, C., 'Balancing, Proportionality and Constitutional Rights,' G. Bongivonani et al. (eds.), Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation, Springer,
Dordrecht, 2018, pp. 581-612.
WEEK 10: MEANS AND ENDS (II)
Reading
Moreso, J. J., 'Ways of Solving Constitutional Rights: Proportionalism vs. Specificationism,' Ratio Iuris, vol. 25 (1), 2012, pp. 31-46.
Further reading
Richardson, H.S. 1990, 'Specifying Norms as a Way to Resolve Concrete Ethical Problems,' Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 19, pp. 279-310. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Analytical and critical skills.
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| Keywords | Legal argumentation,legal reasoning,legal theory,emotions,psychology of legal reasoning |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Amalia Amaya Navarro
Tel: (0131 6) 51 4790
Email: amalia.amaya@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Hannah Ackroyd
Tel: (0131 6)50 2008
Email: hackroyd@ed.ac.uk |
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