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Stages Of Legal Reasoning: Formalism, Analogy, And Realism, Wilson R. Huhn
Stages Of Legal Reasoning: Formalism, Analogy, And Realism, Wilson R. Huhn
Akron Law Faculty Publications
In the late 19th Century, legal reasoning was dominated by formalistic analysis. Judges and lawyers reasoned deductively from base principles. Legal historians have persuasively described how leading judges and scholars fomented a revolution in legal thought in the 20th Century. Starting about 1910, legal realism--or policy analysis-- entered legal reasoning to the point that today it would be unusual to find a judicial opinion or brief that fails to explore the policy implications of an interpretation of the law. This historical shift from formalism to realism suggests that there are stages of legal reasoning.
In this Article, I argue that …