Critical Thinking through Legal Reasoning

This course asks how lawyers, judges, and legislators think and reason differently from the general public, and uses the study of legal analysis to develop the mind and sharpen students’ ability to think clearly, logically, thoroughly, critically, and effectively. This course is designed to teach skills useful in analyzing the reasoning structures found in judicial decisions, and in applying those structures to the constructionof new arguments. The topics we will consider focus on both deductive and inductive reasoning skills, and questions of textual interpretation. The deductive skills studied will include: the application of general principles to specific cases as found in the application of constitutional standards to specific laws, especially including the application of rights to legal questions, and the application of laws to particular cases. The inductive skills studied will include: evaluating proof based on the standards of evidence found at various levels of the legal system and the justification behind this plurality of standards; reasoning from specific cases to general principles; reasoning from analogy in the application of previous rulings to novel cases; the analysis of precedent, in general, as a unique inductive method. Finally, we will consider different processes of textual interpretation including debates between originalism, textualism, intentionalism, and pragmatism as demonstrated in the interpretation of foundational legal texts.

Fall, Spring

034464