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.
Please note that classes for this course will be jointly taught with Honours level students. Although students at both levels will study the same course materials, assessments will be graded according to the relevant benchmark appropriate to the level of study.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A minimum of 15 course spaces will be available to each cohort of students, in an attempt to share course spaces equally across both levels of study. The split of spaces at UG or PG level may be adjusted during the allocation process according to demand. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
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 Amy Purves
Tel:
Email: apurves2@ed.ac.uk |
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