How to Reason about the Law: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Foundations of Public Policy

The major emphasis of this new legal reasoning publication is the law-oriented uses of reasoning concepts. The author provides and interesting and fun approach to this thinker's tool kit, including such varied applications of logic as how to define a strike in baseball, or the reasoning underlying a joke's punch line, or how a mystery writer heightens suspense. Because the underlying concepts are so important, discussions of symbolic logic, statistics and game theory do not involve high-level mathematics. The author does not attempt to convert users to the fields of psychology, sociology or politic science, but rather uses these disciplines to hone reasoning and logical thinking.How to Reason about the Law has a dual structure: Each chapter discusses a single discipline, or a single aspect of a complex discipline such as economics. These discussions provide the necessary background for the subsequent exercises, problems and examples, which are not all about the law but may refer to business, salesmanship, or other fields. Throughout, the author purposefully includes issues that are not normally taught outside of specific logic classes, such as entropy, correlation coefficients, Barbara syllogisms, cognitive dissonance, Nash equilibria, Shapley values, the Trolley problem, and more. These thinking tools will help students analyze arguments, their own and others', as well as guide later public policy and even personal decisions. The large section on economics, or portions on selected scientific principles, can be skipped in classes with strong backgrounds in those fields.