Legal Reason describes and explains analogical reasoning, the distinctive feature of legal argument. It challenges the prevailing view that analogical reasoning is a logically flawed, defective form of deductive reasoning. Drawing on work in epistemology and cognitive psychology, the book shows that analogical reasoning in the law is the same as that used by everyone routinely in ordinary life, and that it is a valid form of reasoning, derived from the innate human capacity to recognize the general in the particular. The use of analogical reasoning in law is dictated by the nature of law, which calls for the application of general rules to particular facts. Critiques of the first edition of the book are addressed directly and objections answered in a new chapter. Written for scholars, students, and persons interested in law, Legal Reason is written in accessible prose, with examples drawn from the law and everyday experience.

The leader in its field and now celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first publication, Leading Constitutional Cases on Criminal Justice is updated annually and includes all significant cases decided in the preceding Term of the Court. In her second year as co-editor, Professor Elizabeth Papp Kamali continues to embrace the editorial approach developed by the late Lloyd Weinreb over an impressive five decades as sole editor: cases are edited generously and presented in a simple, straightforward format, for use in courses on constitutional law and criminal justice. For the 2023 edition, citations that were unavailable for the previous edition have been supplied, small corrections have been made, and one case—Carpenter v. United States—has been expanded from a footnote to a full case in light of its frequent coverage in Criminal Procedure classes. The 2023 edition will be published in August and will be available for fall classes.

The leader in its field and now celebrating the 50th anniversary of its first publication, Leading Constitutional Cases on Criminal Justice is updated annually and includes all significant cases decided in the preceding Term of the Court. In her second year as co-editor, Professor Elizabeth Papp Kamali continues to embrace the editorial approach developed by the late Lloyd Weinreb over an impressive five decades as sole editor: cases are edited generously and presented in a simple, straightforward format, for use in courses on constitutional law and criminal justice. For the 2023 edition, citations that were unavailable for the previous edition have been supplied, small corrections have been made, and one case—Carpenter v. United States—has been expanded from a footnote to a full case in light of its frequent coverage in Criminal Procedure classes. The 2023 edition will be published in August and will be available for fall classes.

We speak of rights as though they are objective matters of fact that have a crucial bearing on how we ought to behave. Yet few, if any, rights are universally acknowledged without wide differences of meaning. Instead, they usually represent the particular ideals of the individuals or groups that claim them. Theories of rights have always grappled with this central problem, but none of the literature on the subject has offered a satisfactory solution. Lloyd Weinreb makes the first significant advance toward an understanding of what rights are, how they function in our lives, and why we need them.

Weinreb's central argument is that rights are tightly connected to responsibility. They are the normative constituents of persons, attributes that we have rightly, as our due. As such, they enable us to overcome the antinomy of moral freedom and natural causal order. Without them, we could not regard human beings as persons, that is, as free and responsible, or autonomous. Since responsibility is a structural feature of our experience and a matter of fact, rights too are matters of fact.

Against a review of the current debates on the subject, Weinreb fully elaborates his original argument on the nature of rights and finds the source of concrete rights in the "nomos," or deep conventions, of a community. Applying his theory, he shows how it helps to answer specific questions about animal rights, human rights-including, in the context of abortion and capital punishment, the right to lifeand civil rights, including particularly rights of the handicapped, gay rights, and affirmative action in contemporary American society. Along the way, Weinreb shows that Oedipus and Roger Clemens havemore in common than either would probably have supposed.

This highly original work will significantly redirect the study of rights. It will be especially valuable to those who practice or study law, philosophy, politics, and public policy.

The leader in its field, Leading Constitutional Cases on Criminal Justice is updated annually and includes all significant cases decided in the preceding Term of the Court. This is a year of editorial transition, with Professor Elizabeth Papp Kamali stepping in to continue updating the book, embracing the approach developed by the late Lloyd Weinreb over an impressive five decades as sole editor. In keeping with Professor Weinreb's method, cases will continue to be edited generously and presented in a simple, straightforward format, for use in courses on constitutional law and criminal justice. For the 2022 edition, citations that were unavailable for the previous edition have been supplied, small corrections have been made, and one case from the most recent Term has been added: Lange v. California. The 2022 edition will be published in August and will be available for fall classes.

CasebookPlus Softbound - New, softbound print book includes lifetime digital access to an eBook, with the ability to highlight and take notes, and 12-month access to a digital Learning Library that includes self-assessment quizzes tied to this book, leading study aids, an outline starter, and Gilbert Law Dictionary.

"Human beings are a part of nature and apart from it." The argument of Natural Law and Justice is that the philosophy of natural law and contemporary theories about the nature of justice are both efforts to make sense of the fundamental paradox of human experience: individual freedom and responsibility in a causally determined universe. Lloyd Weinreb restores the original understanding of natural law as a philosophy about the place of humankind in nature. He traces the natural law tradition from its origins in Greek speculation through its classic Christian statement by Thomas Aquinas. He goes on to show how the social contract theorists adapted the idea of natural law to provide for political obligation in civil society and how the idea was transformed in Kant's account of human freedom. He brings the historical narrative down to the present with a discussion of the contemporary debate between natural law and legal positivism, including particularly the natural law theories of Finnis, Richards, and Dworkin. Weinreb then adopts the approach of modern political philosophy to develop the idea of justice as a union of the distinct ideas of desert and entitlement. He shows liberty and equality to be the political analogues of desert and entitlement and both pairs to be the normative equivalents of freedom and cause. In this part of the book, Weinreb considers the theories of justice of Rawls and Nozick as well as the communitarian theory of Maclntyre and Sandel. The conclusion brings the debates about natural law and justice together, as parallel efforts to understand the human condition. This original contribution to legal philosophy will be especially appreciated by scholars, teachers, and students in the fields of political philosophy, legal philosophy, and the law generally.

Legal Reason describes and explains analogical reasoning, the distinctive feature of legal argument. It challenges the prevailing view that analogical reasoning is a logically flawed, defective form of deductive reasoning. Drawing on work in epistemology and cognitive psychology, the book shows that analogical reasoning in the law is the same as that used by everyone routinely in ordinary life, and that it is a valid form of reasoning, derived from the innate human capacity to recognize the general in the particular. The use of analogical reasoning in law is dictated by the nature of law, which calls for the application of general rules to particular facts. Critiques of the first edition of the book are addressed directly and objections answered in a new chapter. Written for scholars, students, and persons interested in law, Legal Reason is written in accessible prose, with examples drawn from the law and everyday experience.