The Passion for Reason
Moral values play a great role in legal argumentation and decision making. To be sure, both are based on such institutional sources as statutes, precedents, legislative history etc. Yet, even justice is obviously relevant in legal reasoning. This has been the case since times immemorial, e.g. in Rome (where the common law, ius gentium was supposed to express justice), England (law and equity) and also Scandinavia (“lov” and “dom”). In modem law, the statutes are sometimes “read” in the way alien to a layman, in order to obtain reasonable decisions.
The Concept of Coherence and Its Significance for Discursive Rationality
Abstract. The main idea or the concept of coherence can be expressed in the following way: The more the statements belonging to a given theory approximate a perfect supportive structure, the more coherent the theory. The degree of perfection of a supportive structure depends on the degree to which the following criteria of coherence are fulfilled: (1) the greatest possible number of supported statements belonging to the theory in question; (2) the greatest possible length of chains of reasons belonging to it; (3) the greatest possible number of strongly supported statements belonging to the theory; (4) the greatest possible number of connections between various supportive chains belonging to the theory; (5) the greatest possible number of preference relations between various principles belonging to it; (6) the greatest possible number and complexity of reciprocal supportive relations between various statements belonging to the theory; (7) the greatest possible number of universal statements belonging to the theory; the greatest possible number of general concepts belonging to it; the highest possible degree of generality of concepts implemented within it; the greatest possible number of resemblances between concepts used within it; (8) the greatest possible number of conceptual cross-connections between various theories; (9) the greatest possible number of cases covered by the theory; and (10) the greatest possible number of fields of life covered by the theory.
Coherence in Legal Justification
Coherence in reasoning is one important test of its soundness as reasoning. It is a test which is not fully satisfied by mere consistency, in the sense of an absence of self-contradiction. What I say may be free of any internal inconsistency and yet fail to ‘hang together’ or to ‘make sense’ as a whole. The task of this paper is to elucidate this elusive notion of ‘coherence’, of ‘hanging together’, of ‘making sense’. In the specific context of legal justification we find that it has two applications: to reasoning on matters of law, where what is in issue is ‘normative coherence’, and to drawing inferences of fact from evidentiary facts, where what is in issue is ‘narrative coherence’. I shall consider these two applications in that order.