Legal reasoning for hedgehogs
<p>Amalia Amaya’s book The Tapestry of Reason (Amaya 2015) is a sophisticated, scholarly, and far-ranging examination of the nature of coherence in various areas of philosophy, and in legal reasoning in particular. It might be described, with a nod to Dworkin’s later comprehensive theory of va...
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Wiley
2017
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| _version_ | 1797051417146425344 |
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| author | Lamond, G |
| author_facet | Lamond, G |
| author_sort | Lamond, G |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | <p>Amalia Amaya’s book The Tapestry of Reason (Amaya 2015) is a sophisticated, scholarly, and far-ranging examination of the nature of coherence in various areas of philosophy, and in legal reasoning in particular. It might be described, with a nod to Dworkin’s later comprehensive theory of value (2011), as a theory of legal reasoning for hedgehogs. Hedgehogs, because of the idea Isaiah Berlin developed from a line of the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” (2013, 1) Coherence-based reasoning is the one big thing, because coherence-based reasoning subsumes, unifies, and encompasses the whole of legal reasoning. It applies to all forms of legal reasoning, whether over propositions of fact or propositions of law, and it rejects any form of foundationalism in the justification of propositions of fact and law. Furthermore, it is optimistic about the capacity of reason in such a coherence-based theory to resolve value conflicts.</p> <br/> <p>Fascinated as I am by the hedgehog, my own sympathies lie with the fox—with the idea of the plurality of values, the existence of irreconcilable value conflicts, and with the contingency of human life and social practices. In this discussion, therefore, I will pursue some vulpine worries about the hedgehog’s project. That project is carried out in considerable detail, and I want to step back from the detail and raise some general questions about the aims and prospects for the theory. In particular, I will examine three major themes: (a) the methodology of the project; (b) the scope of the theory; and (c) the ambitions of the account of legal reasoning. My focus will generally be on reasoning about propositions of law, rather than propositions of fact, but theme (b) will give some attention to the latter.</p> |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:19:15Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:05b5561e-8eea-4b6d-848a-c2c58819034f |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T18:19:15Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:05b5561e-8eea-4b6d-848a-c2c58819034f2022-03-26T08:58:37ZLegal reasoning for hedgehogsJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:05b5561e-8eea-4b6d-848a-c2c58819034fSymplectic Elements at OxfordWiley2017Lamond, G<p>Amalia Amaya’s book The Tapestry of Reason (Amaya 2015) is a sophisticated, scholarly, and far-ranging examination of the nature of coherence in various areas of philosophy, and in legal reasoning in particular. It might be described, with a nod to Dworkin’s later comprehensive theory of value (2011), as a theory of legal reasoning for hedgehogs. Hedgehogs, because of the idea Isaiah Berlin developed from a line of the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” (2013, 1) Coherence-based reasoning is the one big thing, because coherence-based reasoning subsumes, unifies, and encompasses the whole of legal reasoning. It applies to all forms of legal reasoning, whether over propositions of fact or propositions of law, and it rejects any form of foundationalism in the justification of propositions of fact and law. Furthermore, it is optimistic about the capacity of reason in such a coherence-based theory to resolve value conflicts.</p> <br/> <p>Fascinated as I am by the hedgehog, my own sympathies lie with the fox—with the idea of the plurality of values, the existence of irreconcilable value conflicts, and with the contingency of human life and social practices. In this discussion, therefore, I will pursue some vulpine worries about the hedgehog’s project. That project is carried out in considerable detail, and I want to step back from the detail and raise some general questions about the aims and prospects for the theory. In particular, I will examine three major themes: (a) the methodology of the project; (b) the scope of the theory; and (c) the ambitions of the account of legal reasoning. My focus will generally be on reasoning about propositions of law, rather than propositions of fact, but theme (b) will give some attention to the latter.</p> |
| spellingShingle | Lamond, G Legal reasoning for hedgehogs |
| title | Legal reasoning for hedgehogs |
| title_full | Legal reasoning for hedgehogs |
| title_fullStr | Legal reasoning for hedgehogs |
| title_full_unstemmed | Legal reasoning for hedgehogs |
| title_short | Legal reasoning for hedgehogs |
| title_sort | legal reasoning for hedgehogs |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT lamondg legalreasoningforhedgehogs |