Legal Reasoning

This book takes a fresh approach to legal reasoning and its central place in legal education. It is a new work based partly on the author’s earlier successful United Kingdom book, Introduction to Legal Method (co-authored with Tony Dugdale) and concentrates on legal reasoning and legal method for first year law students and business students.

The book adopts a broad social view of the legal system and examines the legal process in a sometimes critical fashion. Referring to both Australian and New Zealand law and the contrasts between them, this book focuses on how lawyers think and reason. It also considers how legal reasoning claims to be distinctive, while following practical reasoning techniques with policy and value elements.

Written in plain English, the book’s subject matter includes indigenous people’s customs and rights, methods of social control through law, fallacies in reasoning, international influences and human rights. It also discusses the impact of the information revolution on law and lawyers and whether this affects the lawyer’s role and status.