Search results for ""author frederick schauer""
Harvard University Press Thinking Like a Lawyer: A New Introduction to Legal Reasoning
This primer on legal reasoning is aimed at law students and upper-level undergraduates. But it is also an original exposition of basic legal concepts that scholars and lawyers will find stimulating. It covers such topics as rules, precedent, authority, analogical reasoning, the common law, statutory interpretation, legal realism, judicial opinions, legal facts, and burden of proof.In addressing the question whether legal reasoning is distinctive, Frederick Schauer emphasizes the formality and rule-dependence of law. When taking the words of a statute seriously, when following a rule even when it does not produce the best result, when treating the fact of a past decision as a reason for making the same decision again, or when relying on authoritative sources, the law embodies values other than simply that of making the best decision for the particular occasion or dispute. In thus pursuing goals of stability, predictability, and constraint on the idiosyncrasies of individual decision-makers, the law employs forms of reasoning that may not be unique to it but are far more dominant in legal decision-making than elsewhere.Schauer’s analysis of what makes legal reasoning special will be a valuable guide for students while also presenting a challenge to a wide range of current academic theories.
£21.95
Harvard University Press The Proof: Uses of Evidence in Law, Politics, and Everything Else
In a world awash in “fake news,” where public figures make unfounded assertions as a matter of course, a preeminent legal theorist ranges across the courtroom, the scientific laboratory, and the insights of philosophers to explore the nature of evidence and show how it is credibly established.In the age of fake news, trust and truth are hard to come by. Blatantly and shamelessly, public figures deceive us by abusing what sounds like evidence. Preeminent legal theorist Frederick Schauer proposes correctives, drawing on centuries of inquiry into the nature of evidence.Evidence is the basis of how we know what we think we know, but evidence is no simple thing. Evidence that counts in, say, the policymaking context is different from evidence that stands up in court. Law, science, historical scholarship, public and private decisionmaking—all rely on different standards of evidence. Exploring diverse terrain including vaccine and food safety, election-fraud claims, the January 2021 events at the US Capitol, the reliability of experts and eyewitnesses, climate science, art authentication, and even astrology, The Proof develops fresh insights into the challenge of reaching the truth.Schauer combines perspectives from law, statistics, psychology, and the philosophy of science to evaluate how evidence should function in and out of court. He argues that evidence comes in degrees. Weak evidence is still some evidence. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but prolonged, fruitless efforts to substantiate a claim can go some distance in proving a negative. And evidence insufficient to lock someone up for a crime may be good enough to keep them out of jail. This book explains how to reason more effectively in everyday life, shows why people often reason poorly, and takes evidence as a pervasive problem, not just a matter of legal rules.
£23.36
Harvard University Press The Proof Uses of Evidence in Law Politics and Everything Else
£18.95
The University of Chicago Press An Introduction to Legal Reasoning
Originally published in 1949, An Introduction to Legal Reasoning is widely acknowledged as a classic text. As its opening sentence states, "This is an attempt to describe generally the process of legal reasoning in the field of case law and in the interpretation of statutes and of the Constitution." In elegant and lucid prose, Edward H. Levi does just that in a concise manner, providing an intellectual foundation for generations of students as well as general readers. For this edition, the book includes a substantial new foreword by leading contemporary legal scholar Frederick Schauer that helpfully places this foundational book into its historical and legal contents, explaining its continuing value and relevance to understanding the role of analogical reasoning in the law. This volume will continue to be of great value to students of logic, ethics, and political philosophy, as well as to members of the legal profession and everyone concerned with problems of government and jurisprudence.
£17.90
