Legal reasoning and ordinary reasoning

Manish Oza (University of Western Ontario)

Legal reasoning seems to be subject to the same norms as other reasoning. But it often reaches results that diverge from ordinary reasoning. In recent work, several philosophers of law have argued that these facts can be reconciled if we understand legal reasoning as 'perspectival' or 'fictional': as involving claims about what is true, or what follows from what, from the law's perspective. I argue that this view is unable to account for claims and arguments that mix legal and non-legal contents. Instead, I propose that legal reasoning is ordinary reasoning with constraints on the available set of premises. This view is independently motivated: it is what we should expect when we consider the distinctive role played by legal reasoning in authoritatively resolving disputes.