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People who can die are not gods. Socrates can die. Therefore Socrates
is not a god.
As lawyers, we should ensure that all deductive arguments in our
briefs and memos are supported by sound syllogisms. The Judge offers
the following generic model, used by prosecutors in criminal cases, as
a starting point to create your own syllogisms:
[Doing something][violates the law.]
[The defendant][did something.]
[Therefore the defendant][violated the law.]
Syllogisms are tools to help you evaluate and tighten your legal
analysis. They are useful in outlining your arguments or
deconstructing the arguments of others. But to be logically sound,
your arguments do not need to be expressed through syllogisms. The
truth of a premise may be so obvious that writing the premise would
make your writing tedious, particularly given that we write for
sophisticated audiences.
Inductive reasoning by generalization
When you cannot rely on universals or settled law to provide a major
premise to compel your conclusion, you need to build your own major
premise through inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning by
generalization uses several specific facts to create a theory that
explains relationships between those facts and supports your
conclusion. The Judge offers the following example:
Plato was a man and Plato was mortal.
Julius Caeser was a man and Julius Caeser was mortal.
George Washington was a man and George Washington was mortal.
John Marshall was a man and John Marshall was mortal.
Ronald Reagan is a man and Ronald Reagan is mortal.
Therefore, all men are mortal.
To use inductive reasoning successfully, you need to ensure that your
supporting facts represent an appropriate sample size and are
representative. With inductive reasoning, you can never be certain
that your conclusion is true, but through your supporting facts, you
should be able to establish that your conclusion is highly probable.
Inductive reasoning by analogy
Another form of inductive reasoning common in law is analogy, in
which you make one-to-one comparisons and draw similarities
between two different things. Rather than reasoning from the general
to the specific (deductive reasoning) or from the specific to the
general (generalizations), analogy requires reasoning from the
specific to the specific.
Analogy is a common part of everyday life and legal practice. For
instance, I am a lawyer and I find Lawyerist to be useful to my
practice, so I assume other lawyers will find Lawyerist useful to their
practice, as well. The Judge offers the following formula for an
analogy:
A has characteristic Y.
B has characteristic Y.
A also has characteristic Z.
Because A and B both have characteristic Y, we conclude that B also
shares characteristic Z.
To use analogy in law, the Judge suggests that you (1) establish
similarities between two cases; (2) announce the rule of law
embedded in the first case; and (3) apply the rule of law to the second
case. Successful analogy depends on the relevancy of the comparison.
It is therefore important to detail the similarities between the cases
and to acknowledge their differences. You must establish that the
relevant similarities outweigh the relevant differences and therefore
the outcomes should be the same.