The role of coherence in legal reasoning
Law and Philosophy 3 (3):355 - 374 (1984)
| Abstract | Many contemporary philosophers of law agree that a necessary condition for a decision to be legally justified, even in a hard case, is that it coheres with established law. Some, namely Sartorius and Dworkin, have gone beyond that relatively uncontroversial claim and described the role of coherence in legal justification as analogous to its role in moral and scientific justification, on contemporary theories. In this, I argue, they are mistaken. Specifically, coherence in legal justification is sometimes specific to a branch of law, and there is nothing isomorphic to this in the models of moral and scientific justification. Although Dworkin and Sartorius rely on the concept of coherence, they do not explicate it. In the course of examining their views, this essay offers a partial analysis of coherence on their models. Finally, two canons of relevance, governing when global coherence considerations are appropriate to legal justification, are presented. | |||||||||
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Staffan Angere (2007). The Defeasible Nature of Coherentist Justification. Synthese 157 (3):321 - 335.
Laurence BonJour (1994). Fumerton on Coherence Theories. Journal of Philosophical Research 19:103-108.
T. Shogenji (2001). The Role of Coherence in Epistemic Justification. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (1):90 – 106.
Erik J. Olsson (1999). Cohering With. Erkenntnis 50 (2-3):273 - 291.
Barbara Baum Levenbook (1984). On Universal Relevance in Legal Reasoning. Law and Philosophy 3 (1):1 - 23.
Amalia Amaya (2008). Justification, Coherence, and Epistemic Responsibility in Legal Fact-Finding. Episteme 5 (3):pp. 306-319.
Amalia Amaya (2007). Formal Models of Coherence and Legal Epistemology. Artificial Intelligence and Law 15 (4):429-447.
Amalia Amaya (2011). Legal Justification by Optimal Coherence. Ratio Juris 24 (3):304-329.
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