The Significance of Logic for Law

Prof. Douglas Lind

Ever since Justice Holmes asserted that [t]he life of the law has not been logic: it has been
experience, lawyers and judges in the United States have minimized the importance of formal
logic for understanding law and legal reasoning. Many legal scholars and practitioners have
feared that to acknowledge that logic is central to law would risk a return to the rationalistic
excesses of the formalistic jurisprudences that dominated nineteenth century legal thought. It
was, after all, against that formalist tradition that Holmes wrote. And it was in spirited
opposition to that tradition that members of the Legal Realist movement in America, as well as
the Free Law movement in Europe, directed much of their energies early in the twentieth
century.
[T]o comprehend is essentially to draw conclusions
from an already accepted logical system.
Albert Einstein
There is good reason to remain skeptical of overly rationalistic accounts of law and judicial
practice. The weave of historical doctrine, legal principle, and factual nuances that goes into
each judicial decision is far too intricate to permit critical appraisal under any single evaluative
method, including the principles of logic. So we are rightfully apprehensive when we recollect
the formalistic visions of nineteenth century jurists visions which found the essence of
adjudication in the logical derivation of conclusions necessarily required by predetermined legal
principles.

Yet it is somewhere between strict formalistic jurisprudence and an outright disregard for logic
and argumentative form where the law and judicial practice really find repose. Though all that is
typically repeated of Justice Holmes view is the pithy remark quoted above, his jurisprudential
writings together with his judicial opinions show clearly that he never intended to suggest that
logic is not a central aspect of law or judicial decision making. He, as well as the legal realists
and other critics of legal formalism, well recognized that evaluating and creating arguments lie
at the heart of the crafts of lawyering and judging.

It is thus worthwhile for practitioners and students of the law alike to possess an understanding
of the basic principles of logic that are used regularly in legal reasoning and judicial decision
making. This understanding requires, in important part, skill in navigating the processes of
inductive reasoning the methods of analogy and inductive generalization by which
inferences are drawn on the basis of past experience and empirical observation. The common
law method of case law development, as well as the general prescript often referred to as the
Rule of Law that like cases be decided alike are grounded logically in inductive reasoning.

Equally important is a second basic category of argumentation deductive logic, especially the
deductive argument forms known as syllogisms. These are the classic forms of deductive
argument consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. It was this aspect of
logic that a century ago stirred such virulent opposition to formalism. And it is this aspect of
logic which was so severely downplayed throughout the twentieth century. Yet even a
rudimentary understanding of deductive logic gives lawyers, judges, and students of the law a
valuable tool for determining whether an argument in a legal opinion or brief is valid or
fallacious.
In essence, the domain of the law and, within that domain, perhaps most especially the practice
of judicial decision making are exercises in practical reasoning. Law, to be sure, involves more
than logic. Yet the myriad of factors that contribute to good lawyering and fair judging suggest
that the life of the law, while not logic alone, is a manifold of activities that all use and depend
upon reason in specialized ways. The precision of detail required in the drafting of contracts,
wills, trusts, and other legal documents is a rational precision; the care in planning and
strategizing demanded of trial attorneys in deciding how to present their cases is a rational care;
the skill in written and oral argumentation required for appellate practice is, quite obviously, a
rational skill; the talent expected of administrative law judges in crafting coherent findings of
fact and conclusions of law is a rational talent; and the ability of trial and appellate court judges
to separate, dispassionately and without bias, the kernel of argument from the rhetorical and
emotive chaff of adversarial presentation, so as to render judgments that are justified under the
law, is a rational ability.

While it is true that many other factors from self-interest to moral values, from psychology to
science enter into the decision making of lawyers and judges, all such factors bear the ever-
present tincture of reason and logic. Trial attorneys may appeal to the psychology or sentiments
of the jury, but only so far as they reasonably expect to influence the jury to draw rational
inferences in their clients favor. Self-interest may be the sole driving motive for each party in
the drafting of a contract, yet the recognition, grounded in reason, that insisting on onerous
provisions will likely undermine the entire contractual arrangement has the tendency to hold
everyones self-interest in check. And while adjudicative practice calls for a good deal of value
judgment in the choice, interpretation, and application of legal principles, such value
judgments are not free of the constraints of reason. As stated by one appellate court, [E]very
legal analysis should begin at the point of reason, continue along a path of logic and arrive at a
fundamentally fair result. (Sunrise Lumber v. Johnson, Appeal No. 165). To criticize, reverse,
or overrule an administrative or judicial decision as arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by
law, or contrary to precedent is to say nothing more, but nothing less, than that the decision
is deficient in logic and reason.