The Language and Logic of Law: A Case Study

Authors

David N. Haynes

Abstract

Law is a social practice that consists of argument, in large part. This article is a case study of legal argument. The author has undertaken the study in the belief that the forms assumed by legal argument relate to lawyers' conscious or unconscious understanding about what is persuasive in a given legal context. One can articulate these understandings by identifying and describing particular forms of argument and by determining the circumstances in which lawyers use each form. The author examines a set of Supreme Court opinions, using as a guide one of the few contemporary attempts to organize and classify forms of argument.

Recommended Citation

David N. Haynes, The Language and Logic of Law: A Case Study, 35 U. Mia. L. Rev. 183 (1981)
Available at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol35/iss2/2