Legal Reasoning Case Files

Legal Reasoning Case Files

"This text provides real-world case files designed to reinforce foundational legal reasoning skills. Students work through practical problems, each of which is set in the context of a different basic law school subject. Commentary throughout the text guides students toward more sophisticated comprehension the factual and legal materials, and more nuanced legal analysis, all while introducing common forms of practice-based writing. Each chapter then takes the rules introduced in the case file and illustrates ways they might be applied to an essay examination question and multiple-choice question. Additional practice questions and suggestions for classroom exercises are included in the extensive accompanying teacher's manual"--

Synthesis

Legal Rules in Practice

Understanding legal rules not as determinants of behavior but as points of reference for conduct, this volume considers the ways in which rules are invoked, referred to, interpreted, put forward or blurred. It also asks how both legal practitioners and lay participants conceive of and participate in the construction of facts and rules, and thus, through decisions, defenses, pleas, files, evidence, interviews and documents, actively participate in law’s life. With attention to the formulation of notions such as person, evidence, intention, cause and responsibility in the course of legal practices, Legal Rules in Practice provides the outlines of a praxiological anthropology of law – an anthropology that focuses on words, concepts and reasoning as actively used to solve conflicts with the help of legal rules. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists and scholars of law with interests in ethnomethodology, rule-based conduct and practical reasoning.